County staff members on Tuesday made public a plan to dramatically change Bulloch County's waste collection centers system by January 2027, closing 10 of the 22 current centers, staffing the remaining 12 centers, limiting their hours and days of operation and locking them at night.
Additionally, enforcement steps are proposed to restrict the use of the centers to Bulloch residents, with driver's licenses to be checked for first-time vehicle visits in the new year and window stickers issued for subsequent use.
Assistant County Manager Crystal Dawson and interim Solid Waste Director Rose Bonner presented the plan, illustrated by a slide show during the earliest portion of the 8:30 a.m. May 19 Bulloch County Board of Commissioners meeting. The commissioners did not vote on the plan or decide on all the specifics but gave informal approval in the meeting that lasted almost all morning. A penultimate phase of the meeting was a work session on the fiscal year 2027 county budget, which includes changes in expenditures related to the plan.
As Dawson noted, the centers — originally called convenience centers — were previously manned. They also, but she didn't mention this, once served as pre-sorting centers for a more extensive county recycling program. Closures during the COVID-19 pandemic led to the centers becoming mainly unstaffed collection points for household waste on its way to a solid waste transfer station and for yard debris taken to the inert landfill operated by the city of Statesboro.
"The centers are not manned. They are open 24-seven, which means they are completely unprotected. This is leading to a lot of abuse," Dawson said. "You can just drive through and you can see that there's a lot of abuse."
Kinds of abuse
"Scavengers" are freely digging for recyclable metals and other items, Dawson said, calling this "very unsafe for everybody" and noting that many items are often dumped on the ground.
In a later, separate presentation during the same meeting, Bonner shared security camera images of scavenging occurring at Goodwill Industries clothing donation structures on some of the sites and said she had seen people leaving the tiny house-like Goodwill bins in the morning after apparently having slept there. The Goodwill bins are located at four of the centers, and Bonner said she has twice observed Goodwill trucks parked at sites but then leaving without emptying the bins or removing items piled outside them on the ground.
In Tuesday's only vote related to the solid waste centers, commissioners agreed 6-0 to end the agreement with Goodwill Industries of the Coastal Empire that has existed since 2004 and have the clothing bins removed from the sites, as Bonner proposed. But several of the commissioners expressed hope that a new agreement might be made with Goodwill after the remaining centers are staffed under the plan.
Other issues
The current operation of the 22 county-maintained trash collection centers has also led to "unpredictable staffing and overtime," and some of the centers closest to Bulloch's borders are used frequently by residents and sometimes businesses from other counties, the staff members reported.
Much illegal dumping is occurring at the centers, they noted. A summary in the slideshow stated that 30-40 tires or more are left at a time, and asserted that small yard maintenance or tree service operators, as well as some people doing construction and demolition work are dumping at these sites. That means the county is incurring the inert landfill tippage fees and absorbing any further transportation costs.
Planned for Jan. 4
So the plan is to staff the remaining centers, lock them up at night, limit their use to Bulloch residents bringing household items and limit their hours and days of operation.
"We are looking to start January 4th," Dawson said. "This gives us enough lead time to get the centers in place and ready, so the shacks are usable, and … enough lead time … to make sure people understand what changes are happening."
Ten centers to close
The 10 centers slated to close are those at Olney, Arcola, Union Church, Sinkhole and "Clito," the "old" Groveland center, the "Mill Creek" center on Highway 24, and the centers at Rocky Ford, on Highway 80 West and at Lake Collins. Those last three — Rocky Ford, Highway 80 West and Lake Collins — are not fenced and could be closed sooner, Dawson said.
For the remaining 12 centers, the proposed hours of operation are 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., with the centers as a group open Monday through Saturday, but each individual center open only three days each week.
Bonner and Dawson presented the commissioners detailed maps of five-mile service areas from each center, with two options for how the staffing for open days might be rotated among the centers. A "spread coverage" option would have a more scattered pattern of center open on alternating days. A "cluster option" option would have centers in the northwestern half of the county open Monday, Wednesday and Friday and those in the southeastern half open on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Commissioners and staff at this point have not settled on which option they prefer.
The 12 to remain
The 12 centers remaining in operation under the new rules would be those at Westside, Middleground, Ogeechee (on Clito Road), Six Points (Pretoria), Cypress Lake, Simons Road, Portal, Stilson, Denmark, Langston Chapel, Leefield and Pine Inn. All except Westside, Portal, Stilson, Denmark and Langston Chapel were listed as "expandable" for addition of more containers.
The county's current Solid Waste Department staff consists of 17 employees. With the planned changes, that department would lose eight positions, including one collection equipment operator, four full-time truck drivers, two part-time truck drivers and one work detail supervisor.
But the plan calls for adding 12 positions at Bulloch County Correctional Institution for employees to be assigned to work at the collection centers. As County Manager Chris Eldridge confirmed after Tuesday's meeting, these 12 "C.I." personnel will all be regular county employees, not inmates. He and Dawson suggested that placing employees with corrections officer-type uniforms at the centers should add an air of authority when they interact with citizens and enforce the rules.
Inmate worker details could also be tasked to help organize and load items at the sites, Eldridge said, but this was already the case.
Staffing & cost
Solid Waste Department employees maintaining the sites currently work five 10-hour or more days Monday through Friday, plus every third Saturday and most holidays, according to Bonner and Dawson. The proposed new schedule would have them working four 10-hour days each week and getting holidays on the regular county schedule, but the C.I. employees may work different schedules.
Implementing the plan will require some repairs at the centers, with costs estimated at $30,000 to $40,000. The staffing changes involve some continuing costs adjustments, estimated as a $15,000-$20,000 added expenditure for the first six months (January-June 2027) which would be the only part of the plan falling in the next fiscal year (July 1, 2026-June 30, 2027).
Rules for use
Under the plan, people coming to deposit waste items at the center will be required to show a driver's license for proof of residence the first time, obtaining a window sticker for later. Or a permit could be obtained from the county Public Works Division for various reasons.
"And … we want to make sure we have set limits and are only accepting what we want to be accepted into our containers," Dawson said.
"Acceptable" items will include household trash or bulk waste, limbs smaller than six feet in length and eight inches in diameter, metal appliances and scrap metal, or passenger vehicle tires, to a limit of six. "Not acceptable" items will include tires on rims, hazardous waste, vehicle batteries, paint, used motor oil and pesticides.
Opposite the "pro" points of having more control over centers, stopping their abuse, reducing volume and thus county-paid tippage fees and fuel usage, the presentation recognized three "cons" of the plan. These are citizens having farther to travel and reduced hours to drop their trash, the staff adjustment, and an anticipated increase in "road trash," with a need for better enforcement against illegal dumping elsewhere.