Horry County to continue accepting Charleston County’s recyclables

Charleston County can continue sending its recyclables to the Grand Strand.

Horry County Council changed course Tuesday and resuscitated a contract that was all but dead two weeks ago. A final vote on the deal is scheduled for Oct. 6.

The decision brought relief to Charleston County officials and the Horry County Solid Waste Authority, which had signed the agreement without the necessary blessing of county council.

The deal will provide Charleston County with a site to process its bottles, cans, cardboard and newspapers in exchange for compensation that will net the cash-strapped authority about $70,000 per month.

“We really want to see this thing go through so that our Charleston County folks can be helped with this,” said Horry County Councilman Al Allen, who was one of four council members to vote against a budget amendment for the deal two weeks ago.

At the time, some council members voiced frustration with the authority’s handling of the situation. They said the SWA’s leaders waited too long to get county officials involved in the contract discussions.

Although seven councilmen voted for the proposal on Sept. 1, the measure needed a supermajority – or nine votes – to pass.

County ordinances that fail on the floor typically don’t come back up, but Allen was able to request that the matter be reconsidered because he voted against it during the prior meeting.

On Tuesday night, the vote was unanimous, though council members stipulated that the contract go through the council’s Infrastructure and Regulation Committee on Sept. 24 before the full council’s final vote.

Allen said the committee meeting would allow council members to “work through some issues with our Solid Waste Authority folks.”

County leaders also said that if the contract does receive the council’s ultimate stamp of approval, SWA leaders must report to at least one council committee with monthly updates about the recycling program’s progress.

Charleston County officials initially reached out to the SWA because they were ending their relationship with Sonoco, a company that had been processing their recyclables, and needed time to build a new recycling facility. They said the old center the Lowcountry county owned couldn’t handle the volume of materials that county was generating.

Solid Waste Authority officials have said their agency’s staff first learned about Charleston County’s needs on May 28, but the SWA board didn’t authorize the group’s executive director to negotiate a contract until a special called meeting on July 21.

Charleston County’s contract with Sonoco ended on July 31.

The SWA has been accepting Charleston County’s recyclables for weeks. The local facility processes and bales the items and sends them to a factory that converts the waste into something useable, such as carpet made from old soda bottles.

For the authority, the benefits of this arrangement are financial. Earlier this year, SWA leaders discussed increasing garbage fees in Horry because they anticipated a $600,000 revenue decrease in recyclable sales revenue.

They’ve also said a council decision last year to allow some construction waste to be hauled to landfills outside Horry has lightened their coffers.

Officials estimate Horry County could receive 72,000 tons of Charleston County recyclables throughout the next two years, netting more than $1.6 million.

SWA leaders have admitted they should have handled the situation better, particularly by communicating with council members earlier in the process.

County Councilman Johnny Vaught, one of the leaders who voted against the agreement two weeks ago, said Tuesday that he’d read about other entities also expressing interest in processing items at the SWA’s recycling facility.

Any discussions about those deals, he said, should come through the council’s infrastructure committee before they’re signed.

“As long as we can put in that process,” he said, “then I think we can avoid a lot of the problems that we’ve had in the past.”

This story was originally published September 15, 2015 at 9:10 PM with the headline "Horry County to continue accepting Charleston County’s recyclables."