As you can see, I am in front of the Three Rivers Solid Waste Authority Administration building. I’m here for a meeting of the board of directors.
One of the responsibilities of the chairman of Saluda County is to sit on the board of directors for Three Rivers Solid Waste Authority and for Tri County Solid Waste Authority.
Three Rivers meets once a quarter with a couple of extra meetings um during budget season, usually around 12:00. Takes an hour and a half to get down here, an hour and a half to get back, obviously. So, a big chunk of my day today is dealing with Three River Solid Waste Authority.
That’s one of the approximately 40 meetings I go to between 8:30 and 3:00 every year. About 40 meetings. There’s another 90 meetings or so that I go to that are after 3:00 and one of those is Tri County Solid Waste Authority. Tri County meets bimonthly.
So, I go to a lot of meetings about trash. I’ve learned about trash, a lot about trash, more than I thought I would.
Today we’re probably talking about the high cost of transporting our leech to Georgia for disposal since we can’t send it to Horse Creek and Aiken anymore because of the high phosphate. I didn’t know that was a thing. We’re also probably going to talk about the $30 million we’re going to spend to open a new sale to dispose of trash. Trash is important to us. That’s about a million dollar line item in our budget. Probably nearly $800,000 of that is the actual dumping the trash in the ground.
We do have about 8,000 tons of trash for Saluda County every year. This is what goes in from your convenience centers where they haul it away from there or where we sit in private haulers like Good Old Boys bring their trash here to dispose of. So it’s about 8,000 tons a year that we have to dispose of. It goes to Tri County first. Tri County is made up of Saluda, McCormick, and Edgefield counties. Three Rivers on the other hand is made up of Saluda and eight other counties. Bamberg, Barnwell, Aiken, Calhoun, Orangeburg, McCormick. Um, and I’m sure I left some people out, but anyway, it’s it’s nine counties make up three rivers.
Now, the $800,000 just to dump the trash in the ground sounds like a lot of money. It is. It is a lot of money. However, Three Rivers is the cheapest place in the state for us to dispose of our trash and we got to do something with it.
So, anyway, here I am for a meeting, yet another meeting to talk about trash to figure out what to do with it.
As you see, I’m sitting in my truck waiting to go in there. It’ll take a couple hours.So, big part of my day today is dealing with trash. It’s just part of being the chairman.
There’s a lot of stuff happens during the day. Kind of hard for somebody to do it if they hold a full-time job. But I’m sure it can be done.
Well, I’m not sure it can be done. But anyway, good thing I’m retired.
And as always, if you see my little red truck out there in front of the office building, stop in and I’ll be happy to give you an education on leech and trash hauling and disposal of all manner. Waste tires. That’s another big issue. Anyway, thank you and I will talk to you again.
I would appreciate your vote and your support.
