West Dundee officials gave a tentative thumbs up Monday for the village to serve as one electronics recycling drop-off location for county residents.
The deal with Kane County is contingent on whether two additional municipalities also step up as host sites and if the county resumes operations of its monthly electronics recycling events.
In April, West Dundee and St. Charles were the last of four communities to end its involvement in the recycling program. Sites in Geneva and Batavia closed in December.
West Dundee trustees opted last month to direct village staff to continue discussions with the county on the proposal, especially in the areas of indemnification and liability.
“We’ve given the approval in concept to be involved in this but we do not want to be the only site in Kane County,” Public Works Director Eric Babcock said of Monday’s decision.
Jennifer Jarland, Kane County Recycling Program coordinator, attended Monday’s meeting. She said the intergovernmental agreement would include a $1,000 a month incentive payment to the village for each month the electronics drop off site is open through 2016. Payments for 2017 and beyond is yet to be determined, contingent on the approval of grant funds and the roll-out of a municipal funding mechanism, Jarland said.
The agreement also states that the county’s recycler would agree to assume all risk of loss and hold the village “harmless from and against any and all liabilities, demands, claims, suits, losses, damages, causes of action, fines or judgments, including costs, attorneys’ and witnesses’ fees, and expenses incident thereto, for injuries to persons (including death) and for loss of, damage to, or destruction of property because of or arising out of the recycler’s negligent or intentional acts or omissions,” according to village documents.
Initially, Batavia and Aurora were considering the proposal to serve as electronics recycling sites. But Batavia has since opted out. Jarland said she is now in talks with South Elgin as a replacement for Batavia.
“Aurora is moving much slower than we’d like so we’re hoping to open a temporary site,” she said. “What we’re looking at right now is the old jail site on Fabyan Parkway (in Geneva). There’s a little parking lot there we can open up. It would definitely be temporary but it will work while we wait for Aurora.”
The county’s contracted recycler, eWorks Electronic Services, Inc., would set up and staff each site during open hours. They would also supply free of charge the trailers and transportation logistics, all of the packing materials, and electronics processing/recycling.
County officials are concerned that if a short-term solution is not put in place quickly, county residents could be without electronic recycling services for an extended period of time, Babcock said in a memo to the Village Board.
“The county’s position is that a successful, smaller scale model of the program must be put into practice in order for the larger program to be viable and have credibility for broader interest,” he said. “There is also a concern that if forced to wait until a larger program is established, eWorks will lose interest and pull out of the operation altogether.”
Kane County made the decision to suspend its own electronics recycling program indefinitely due to the overwhelming amount of electronics that were collected at a May event.
Jarland said her current objective is securing the three municipalities and resuming the county’s monthly electronics recycling drop off events.
“After I get all of that up and running my main focus will be reaching out to the all municipalities,” she said.
Erin Sauder is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.
