Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Peter Micciche points to where the baler ram severed from the machine at the Central Peninsula Landfill in Soldotna, Alaska, on Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025. (Jake Dye/Peninsula Clarion)

Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Peter Micciche points to where the baler ram severed from the machine at the Central Peninsula Landfill in Soldotna, Alaska, on Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025. (Jake Dye/Peninsula Clarion)

Borough, advocates seek path forward for recycling after baler failure

The borough needs to measure whether its actions are really reducing the impact of solid waste on the planet, mayor says.

Over a month after a catastrophic failure in the Central Peninsula Landfill’s baler halted some borough recycling operations in Kenai and Soldotna, the Kenai Peninsula Borough and local advocacy groups are working to figure out what a new vision of recycling on the peninsula could — and should — look like.

Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Peter Micciche said Thursday that Central Peninsula Landfill is still collecting glass and aluminum cans for recycling, while no longer accepting for recycling cardboard, plastic, paper and tin. At the transfer stations in Homer and Seward, he said all recycling is “continuing as normal for now.”

The baler, seen Thursday at the landfill, is a two-story machine that fills a large area of the main structure. It was originally used for compacting all trash, but for most of its 33 years it was used primarily for processing recycled materials like cardboard and plastic.

Those items would be ferried up a conveyor belt and dropped into a chute at the top. A large hydraulic ram would compress the material “the size of a pickup” into manageable cubes that could be shipped away.

That ram, on Dec. 11, severed from the machine, as first reported by KDLL 91.9 FM. On Thursday, it could be seen hanging detached from the body of the baler, empty holes visible where once 36 large bolts held it in place. Piping on the back of the large apparatus was bent out of shape by the force of the ram.

Now, with the baler out of operation, Micciche says the borough is taking the opportunity to look at its recycling and solid waste operations and consider how best to facilitate waste disposal and responsibly recycling material.

A challenge for recycling projects on the Kenai Peninsula, Micciche said, is the distance material has to travel to a place it might be used. When the global focus is on greenhouse gases, he said the borough’s existing operations may have been missing the mark.

At a meeting of the Kenai Peninsula Borough’s Resiliency and Security Commission on Jan. 8, Micciche cast doubt as to how effective some borough recycling efforts — particularly plastic — had been.

As it stands, he told the commission, the borough is collecting “partially full” containers of recycled material from around the peninsula and transporting them to the Central Peninsula Landfill. He said there’s no record of where material goes after being shipped out from the borough — the answer could be another landfill thousands of miles away.

“Driving around, picking up zero value plastics at a million miles a year and generating 2.5 million tons of carbon is not what’s best for the planet,” Micciche told the Clarion on Thursday. “We don’t even know what happens with plastics when we ship them out.”

To find a way forward, Micciche said the borough has begun to assemble an internal team with department directors, “experts” and members of the public from groups like the Resiliency and Security Commission, ReGroup and Cook Inletkeeper, to conduct a “cradle to grave evaluation” of what material can be recycled and how.

Borough Planning Director Robert Ruffner told the resiliency commission that exploration of the future of borough recycling means developing a greater understanding of the economic and ecological impacts of solid waste and recycling efforts. He said he was eager to review how other rural communities are tackling the same issues, or other countries in northern climates. The borough hasn’t considered any alternatives, he said, because they’ve been doing the same thing for 30 years.

At a meeting of the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly on Jan. 7, Cook Inletkeeper Energy Policy Analyst Ben Boettger said that he wanted to see a “comprehensive, top-to-bottom look at how recycling can and should be done to make it more efficient and practical in the borough.”

Micciche said at that meeting that a comprehensive look at borough recycling was exactly what was proposed.

The work, he said, demands coming together with different groups and deciding “what things should look like and what’s best for the planet — not just what makes us feel good.”

“We don’t want to spin our wheels,” he said. “We want to deliver the best quality services at the lowest cost possible. The impact on the planet is part of that cost.”

Recycling, he said, is a priority of the borough, but projects like developing new recycling solutions can “have a long lead time.”

“It’s not budgeted,” he said. “It’s not going to be in the budget in the near future, because we’re not positive what direction we’re going to go.”

Micciche said Thursday that tires have long been an area he’s envisioned improvement, with around 10,000 buried by solid waste each year.

“Multiply that, 10,000 a year for 30 years, it’s an enormous amount of space,” he said. “Even if we just shredded it and used it for landfill purposes — drainage and things like that — it would be a pretty dramatic improvement. That is a marketable item.”

Shredded tire material can also be used for playground padding, like that already in use at the Nikiski Community Recreation Center. The governor vetoed $500,000 in funds directed to the borough’s Solid Waste Department last year that Micciche said Thursday was intended to be used toward purchase of a shredder, but he hasn’t given up on the idea.

Waste to energy options, Micciche said, could also be a potential avenue.

Micciche told the resiliency commission that recycling will never be profitable, but the borough needs to measure whether its actions are really reducing the impact of solid waste on the planet. For some items, there may be “no way” to create a positive impact compared to simply not recycling the material — “that’s going to be a tough message for a lot of people.”

Members of the commission said that to see recycling bettered in the borough will likely require finding solutions and uses in state — like paper converted into cellulose fiber for attic installation.

Finding a solution for cardboard, he said on Thursday, makes sense. It’s “unlikely” that the borough will be recycling plastic in the future “until we identify a process that is at least carbon neutral and has some benefit.”

At a ReGroup board meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 14, Ruffner spoke similarly. Finding a solution for plastics that doesn’t put more carbon into the atmosphere “doesn’t look good.” But, he said, the borough could more quickly find an answer for cardboard.

ReGroup members suggested using recycled plastic lumber, like the Grizzly Wood produced by Patrick Simpson and Alaska Plastic Recovery, to create dumpsters; to use a punch press to make cardboard into packing material or to find local uses for the aluminum from cans.

While finding solutions and redefining borough recycling will take some time, Micciche on Thursday repeated a call he made during the meetings of the assembly and the resiliency commission.

“It’s reduce, reuse, recycle,” he said. “I don’t put anything in the landfill that I don’t have the choice of putting in the landfill.”

He encouraged reuse of large plastic bags and careful consideration about the amount of packaging that comes with items ordered or purchased.

To the resiliency commission, Micciche cited his efforts to promote reuse through reopening of the “Sterling Mall” at the Sterling Transfer Site and other similar “Reuse Areas.” There could be room, he said, for contractors to take material like aluminum at no cost — reducing labor costs to the borough and keeping that material from arriving in landfill cells.

“Anything we can keep out of the ground is valuable,” he said.

Ultimately, Micciche said Thursday that the baler failure is a “great” opportunity to take a fresh look at how solid waste operates.

“How are we going to make it the most efficient, bring down our cost and do the best job possible for the planet,” he said. “I don’t think we would have been at this step without the failure of this piece of machinery. We likely would have gone on longer doing the same old thing.”

For now, Micciche said that people can continue to bring and recycle glass and aluminum at Central Peninsula Landfill. In Seward and Homer, recycling operations are presently unaffected by the baler failure.

For more information, find “Kenai Peninsula Borough,” “Cook Inletkeeper,” and “ReGroup.”

The Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly next meets on Tuesday, Jan. 27 at 6 p.m. in the Betty J. Glick Assembly Chambers. The Resilience and Security Advisory Commission meets on Zoom on Wednesday, Feb. 12 at 6 p.m. ReGroup has its next board meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 11 at 5:30 p.m. at the Soldotna Public Library and a location and Zoom link will be published to Facebook.

This story was edited on Friday, Jan. 17 to correct the date of the next Resilience and Security Advisory Commission meeting.

Reach reporter Jake Dye at jacob.dye@peninsulaclarion.com.

Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Peter Micciche holds one of the large bolts that formerly connected the baler ram to the larger machine at the Central Peninsula Landfill in Soldotna, Alaska, on Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025. (Jake Dye/Peninsula Clarion)

Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Peter Micciche holds one of the large bolts that formerly connected the baler ram to the larger machine at the Central Peninsula Landfill in Soldotna, Alaska, on Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025. (Jake Dye/Peninsula Clarion)

A large baler fills a building at the Central Peninsula Landfill in Soldotna, Alaska, on Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025. Before the ram attached to the bottom left was severed from the machine in a December failure, material was carried by a conveyor belt to the tower on the right and compressed into cubes. (Jake Dye/Peninsula Clarion)

A large baler fills a building at the Central Peninsula Landfill in Soldotna, Alaska, on Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025. Before the ram attached to the bottom left was severed from the machine in a December failure, material was carried by a conveyor belt to the tower on the right and compressed into cubes. (Jake Dye/Peninsula Clarion)

A disconnected baler ram has bent piping and caused other damage at the Central Peninsula Landfill in Soldotna, Alaska, on Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025. (Jake Dye/Peninsula Clarion)

A disconnected baler ram has bent piping and caused other damage at the Central Peninsula Landfill in Soldotna, Alaska, on Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025. (Jake Dye/Peninsula Clarion)

Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Peter Micciche dumps aluminum cans into recycling containers at the Central Peninsula Landfill in Soldotna, Alaska, on Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025. (Jake Dye/Peninsula Clarion)

Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Peter Micciche dumps aluminum cans into recycling containers at the Central Peninsula Landfill in Soldotna, Alaska, on Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025. (Jake Dye/Peninsula Clarion)

Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Peter Micciche points to where the disconnected baler ram has bent piping at the Central Peninsula Landfill in Soldotna, Alaska, on Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025. (Jake Dye/Peninsula Clarion)

Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Peter Micciche dumps aluminum cans into recycling containers at the Central Peninsula Landfill in Soldotna, Alaska, on Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025. (Jake Dye/Peninsula Clarion)

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