OBSERVER Photo by M.J. Stafford
The Dunkirk Common Council’s Department of Public Works Committee meets Thursday. From left are spectator Mary Louise McGraw, DPW chief Randy Woodbury, and Councilpersons Natalie Luczkowiak and Nancy Nichols.
Dunkirk would go to a permit system for its dump and recycling center under a plan by city Department of Public Works Director Randy Woodbury.
He and other city officials are fed up with non-residents sneaking in to use the facility. Woodbury described his plan at a DPW committee meeting.
If he gets his way, anyone who wants to use the Lucas Avenue site would need to get a sticker for their vehicle window. Getting that sticker would involve a visit to the City Clerk’s Office to prove Dunkirk residency.
Councilperson Nancy Nichols, DPW committee chair, asserted the city is not making money on its trash and recycling operations because it has to handle the non-Dunkirkian dumping.
“We don’t know where they’re getting the stuff they’re dumping there,” she added.
“We’re the most liberal site we know of,” Woodbury said. “Jamestown was like us, but the contractors abused it.”
That city then went to a strictly residential-use model, with a permitting system, he continued. “We’d like to mirror that system,” he said.
Access to Dunkirk’s Lucas Avenue dump and recycling center is currently restricted by a part-time guard and a gate. The guard has several other duties for the city,
Woodbury said “we can probably get through this season” under the current system, but he wants changes for next year. He said Mayor Kate Wdowiasz supports him on the issue.
“There are places contractors can go to to get rid of commercial material,” he said, noting one is on Webster Road in nearby Fredonia.
“We’re losing money because when our guys could be doing something else, we’re paying them to (gather improperly dumped items),” Nichols said.
Woodbury wondered if long-term, there could be a regional solution. “Other towns have the same problem,” he noted.
“Regional problems deserve regional solutions,” he said. Woodbury suggested using a narrow strip of land on Millennium Parkway “that looks too small for a factory” for a facility where the region’s municipalities could bring contractors’ waste to a tub grinder.
But for now, “people from the towns and from Fredonia know when there is no guard at the (Lucas Avenue facility) gate, and they dump,” Nichols said.