John Roosa, Administrator, Boone County Landfill and Boone County Recycling, August 5, 2026

Joining us today, we do have the ever-popular… You’re waiting for it. I’m waiting. It’s the legendary John Rosa. Good morning. How are you? Welcome back. Welcome to August. Yeah. Here we are. We have another household hazardous waste collection event coming up. You’ve got all kinds of different things to… Yeah. Just got done with one and we’re heading into the couple weeks on the 15th, a new one added to the process, maybe not for so much for locals here in Boone area, but the other part of our primary service area that’s often kind of, I guess, forgotten about a little bit, but it’s certainly important to take care of those folks as well, but over in Green County, everybody in the county except for the city of Jefferson is part of our primary service area. So we’re always looking at how can we make something that’s a little more convenient for those folks for household hazardous waste collection and disposal. So we’ll talk to the city of Jefferson. They already have one scheduled in August 15th, so discussed with them. Could we just join in? Could we piggyback off? Could we play? Yeah. Would you guys play nice with us? And they were. They were very nice about it and allowed us to spread the word to the other cities over there, the smaller towns that we service and the residents out in the country as well, to attend the event and we would help staff it, so we’re not just dumping upon the city of Jefferson. We want to do our part. So we’ll staff that, help staff that as well on August 15th. So again, it’s just the regular stuff that we do here, you know, in our regular collection process. But just an opportunity to do over there. Yeah. Again, was this, obviously, you did the one over in Ogden during their cleanup. And so was this just, did somebody bring it up or were you going, there wasn’t interest you know, how do we, how do we reach out to the rest of that service? Yeah. I had gone to the city of Sheridan, I believe it was. Okay. Last couple of years and just talked recycling and stuff, just general information. And it was talked about then about a household hazardous waste and like, well, we got to go all the way over to Boone and said, you know, I’d like to be able to set something up and just kind of worked out. So yeah, just to start the conversation, I guess, with some residents and we figured out a solution. Hopefully. Do they use Metro as well? Yeah. Well, this helps a lot. And that was what made it real simple is the same companies providing the service, Metro Waste Authority provides the service for the city of Jefferson. Just a different facility where the city of Jefferson would take their recycling and trash and stuff. So same company, same people, same involvement, everybody on board. So it would just be a data recording thing about where people are from and such. So yeah, pretty simple, straightforward, kind of easy solution. It’ll work. And then hopefully it’ll be every year occurrence going forward. So kind of excited to see how this works out. Well, I mean, given that opportunity, I mean, otherwise, you know, if they happen to be driving by on a Saturday morning on 30, they could just pull in and drop it off because they are part of your service area. Don’t forget, you’ve got a designated area, and again, set up by somebody higher up in the house. DNR. And they’re the ones that basically handle all of the logistics, well, I guess not logistic. They put everything in place. You have to handle the logistics. And we have to abide by the rules and regulations. We have those conversations and it’s, you know, it’s disappointing and frustrating for folks when they show up from outside the area and they want to go and we ask them where they’re from and they say, and then it’s like, well, sorry, you have to go somewhere else and they don’t understand. It’s a simple mistake for those that haven’t checked it out about where do I go? Oh, well, the closest one is, boom, so I’ll just go there. And it’s not always about that. Sometimes it’s not the most convenient one, but it’s just what’s designated for that particular area. And it can be complicated as I’ve rattled off the information to folks about it and they ask, why, you know, well, why not Jefferson? And I’m like, I really don’t know. And then why do we take in Farnhamville, Laureville and Summers up in Calhoun County? They come to us. Yeah, I know. Yeah. It’s, we didn’t do it, but it was put together quite some time ago anyway. So that’s what we’re working with. And then you had the incident, of course, when Story County shut down their landfill, which by the way, yeah, that’s what we’re trying to avoid as much as possible. But they did when they shut down Story and Ames and that’s when the DNR said, well, your secondary place is going to be booing. And here we go. Yeah. And back then it was, it was maybe okay, you know, but I don’t know if they considered long-term impacts on, on the Boone County landfill and that’s where we’re at now and trying to address that, make some changes with it. And that’ll be in the works for July 1 of 27 going forward with the Ames and Story County waste going to Carroll instead of to the Boone County landfill. So here we go. Trying to prolong our life. So you’re on, on Saturday morning. No, you did it last Saturday. Yeah. The first. Okay. So that was last Saturday. And then the one on the 15th will be over at Jefferson. In Jefferson. For basically Green County or anybody on the west side of Boone County could actually. Yep. Still the same service area. If they missed out on going to Ogden or anything like that. Yeah. All right. Hey, well, I love it when a plan comes together. That’s good. You spoke at the city council meeting this week. John was one of them up there. I was. Yeah. And trying to cram all the things we talk about in like 25 minutes or so into two minutes. Yeah. The bottom line is the mayor said, you know, he happened to be out there and you guys were talking a little bit about the recycling and he had no idea that you actually had to rent space or Boone County actually the landfill is renting the space for the recycling drop off at Co’s and appreciate Co’s allowing you to be there because I know there are times when they would say, you know, we could use this space. Right. Yep. Yeah. They’re renting the bigger transfer or the building at Co for more recycling efforts. Well, it was being used for a lot of other things at that time and then when they started when they bought it and basically move their business in there, they needed the space. So then we rented the drop off area of the building out back and we want to keep that going. That was part of what people are familiar with and sometimes it’s difficult to change things up and I thought it’d be simple to keep that going. But you know, that’s been in the works for a few years. Well, about nine years now, I think, since we switched to the transfer station. So paying rent on that garage, that facility where we have our containers for the recycling drop off and paying the monthly rent and, you know, and then it went up, which is, you know, understandable, but also, you know, as I mentioned, the council is recycling is very expensive and but we still need to do it to save our space as much as possible. It’s still the right thing to do. And but just to make it more affordable, what else, what else could we look at? So just presented the idea that similar to what Ogden did. Yeah. Yeah. And that was kind of what like, well, I can’t boon do that for us too. Ogden put up a hoop shed to address the can collection and then the recycling drop off that was kind of on their main drag through town and put on the other side of the tracks, which not perfect, but still a good spot. And they offered to put up a building, a hoop building for us and with the agreement that we would continue to operate it as we have been with or we would operate it kind of like what we do in boon with a container or a trailer or something to collect recycling. And then we would run that box and unload it and bring a new one back, et cetera. So it worked out pretty nice, I think. So over there, when they did that and gave them a separate site and everything else set up for that, have you seen more and more people starting to use it and becoming more aware that it’s there? It sure seems like it. Yes. Yeah. Dumping it more often. See information on Facebook, on occasion about asking questions about it and people taking the initiative to say, you know, we got to tear down those boxes, you know, let’s save the space in there. Right now. Throw your styrofoam in there. No, no, no. But yeah, definitely an increase. And you know, for Ogden, I don’t believe they have any curbside service for recycling over there. So that was something that’s definitely needed, I guess, is some place to go with it. Otherwise, it’s all going to go in the garbage. For the most part, I guess, maybe people, some would come to boon to take care of it. But certainly more accessible and more accommodating for folks over in Ogden to just take it up to that hoop building. Right. And place it in the trailer there. So you kind of pitched to the, I know you talked to the mayor and the mayor said, well, you know, so you came to the council and just said, you know, is there a possibility we could see doing this again? Then for us, it would reduce the cost of having to rent, but we would still have a place where people could go because you do see a lot of traffic. I mean, I know you make, like over in Ogden, you make more trips all the time. So for voluntary recycling, that’s good. It’s growing on its own. Yep. And honestly, if we can have a place and, you know, on the same side of the railroad tracks, you know, so we would have to deal with that. But also with that, we would be able to put up a building that is more accommodating. Right now, we have those two containers at the drop off area. Really we’d like to have three spots, if not more, I mean, you can always use more space. But if we would have enough stalls for like four, we could at least put three in there and then rotate them as we go. Part of the issue is over the weekend, you know, if we don’t want Fridays, they’re not going to make it through the weekend typically anymore. It used to be like, maybe some weekends we could. But for the most part, I mean, it’s heavily used. The amount of traffic I see there, usually like if I’m going out there to drop things up, and I’ll do not every weekend, but every couple of weeks at least. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes you got to wait to get in. Yeah. And so we want to be able to support that effort, you know, and I start really thinking about the idea, the area that they’re talking about, and it’s big enough that, you know, if we were able to do this, could we do more, you know, and I would always always want to do more with the recycling of what else could we do, you know, whether it’s, you know, there’s a lot of cans that are thrown into the drop off boxes uptown and people will pick those out and get them to the redemption, which is great. I’m going to support that as much as we could. But you know, there are other things that we can collect the proper way. It’s always nerve wracking to be able to say, yeah, now we can bring this and these other items to us. I would love more diversion efforts of whatever we can do with that, like pallets, for instance. And I know there’s people that say, I just can’t get rid of mine, you know, well, did you try, you know, put them on your curb and see a lot of people will take pallets. I don’t, you can’t turn into a junkyard or a, you know, a trash collection area in that regard either, because that would be a financial burden upon us as well. But you know, what else could we do? So just ideas about making it more expansive. If we’d have more space, what else could we do with this opportunity? So, but probably get in the cart before the horse, so to speak, when we need the, we need the space first and then we can do something. We’ll see if, well, what the city does, because council seemed receptive to, I think so. Because you, I mean, it’s more and more people use it all the time. And it’s part, we do have some curbside, but we have some that no longer does curbside. Right. So again, there have been some changes in that area. So again, that it pushes people to making use of if they are going to recycle. I’m not going to say everybody does, but they don’t, you try to give them the opportunity. I know that. If you have the option for the curbside service, you know, that’s, that should be step one. If you have that availability to take advantage of that, that should be the most convenient. I believe anyway. And then a more larger drop off area, more accommodating would be a second option. So you know, I know there’s people that will oftentimes those containers get over full and people want to, well, I came to the drop off area, I’m going to get rid of my recycling and then it gets piled up and again, and that’s something that we have to deal with to make it fit because we had to tarp and we had to transport it. So you know, and if we have more containers available in those situations, hopefully then it wouldn’t be become that issue either. So yeah, just try to make as convenience, more the most convenient as we can and look for whatever opportunities we can with that. Does Madrid, do they have curbside? Yeah, they do. Okay. So that’s just an agreement, I believe. Yeah, I think they had to get the totes for those. I thought I’d seen that in some of their minutes. There’s some, you know, there’s drawbacks with that service as well because unless people are educated properly about what each of the containers are for, you know, that can be easily viewed as well, now I have two garbage containers and I just throw it all in there. And then one of them has garbage in it when it should not. And then, and we see that, I mean, the quality of material that comes in on curbside service is certainly lower than the drop off areas. Just bottom line, it’s called contaminated. Yep. It gets contaminated and then that just ends up going to the landfill. Yeah, it sure does. I mean, valiant effort to try and do that. And then there’s always these, as we’ve said before, well, it should be recyclable if it’s yeah, hopeful or wishful or should be recycled. It should be recyclable. But as long as people, again, boxes at least the ones I’ve seen out there, occasionally you get somebody who just puts in the whole box and doesn’t break it down, but it seems like somebody else will come wandering along after that and they do it. Yeah, help them out. Take care of it for them. They’ll just do it. For us too. And thank you very much for that. Yeah. Yep. We certainly appreciate those. You know, those people are very determined recycling fanatics, if you will, that want to make sure it’s always there and doing it right. And we greatly appreciate those. We’ll get phone calls from people saying, box are kind of full or the containers are full up here. You know, you need to get them swapped and get them emptied and it’s like, yep, thank you. We see that on the camera and it’s on our list and we’re getting there. But you know, I know they care and they want to make sure that we have it available for them. Which is good. But it’s not done right. And again, because they don’t want to lose what they’ve been using. So if they had to go to a different location, we might have no, we’ll just see. Again, got a ways to go on that, but at least you made that pitch to the council and we’ll see what happens. Yeah. It’d be interesting to see and I like to keep the conversation going. It’s one of them like, well, maybe they don’t realize what we’re going through. I know Mericassati was like, I didn’t really, I didn’t, you rent that, you know, I didn’t know we had to incur that cost and the other expenses that go along with it. And that’s, if that’s one that we could offset, we, if the city could help us offset that by allowing us a facility where we don’t need to continue renting, then, you know, they’ll save us money long term. And we certainly want to be around long term for that process. You did explain to the council, and this is one of those things I always find interesting. Taking solid waste, we make money because they pay to dump it. And you know, they’ve paid an amount to dump it. Recycling cost us money. It’s not inexpensive. No. It’s kind of like same with yard waste. You say free yard waste, not necessarily free. I mean, you get to get rid of it free of charge, but in one location, but it does cost to handle it. And you’ve got to have somebody do that. Yeah. Yeah. We have a different term on there. We don’t know what we could use for that, but free to you, yard waste, or free to small yard waste. Well, come up with some new language here, some new semantics. All right. Let’s talk a little bit about your projects that are going on. Obviously, the big one has force main that’s moving ahead. And now they’re, I’m guessing at that level where prep is being moving ahead on cell nine. Yeah. Cell nine. What should I put? Anyway, cell nine. Okay. Yeah. But, and again, we’re finding out all the time you did work in with engineering. That’s one of those things. New ideas and new things coming up all the time. So they’re talking about, okay, here, if we start this now, that allows us to spread out and do thinner, get better compaction. And that gives you, it’s all math folks. It’s all math. Yeah. Thank goodness he did that in, when he taught us. Future life. Yeah. Both projects are moving along whenever they can, you know, you look at the weather today. Well, the rain’s kind of slowed him down a little. Mud, not helpful for the scraping and dirt removal process at the cell area. And same goes with the force main. They did a lot of work on that project for the force main, for the leachate to be pumped to town. Got the interior work, a lot of that done, got it up top. And now there had built the risers for the second pump station to then pump it into town. And you know, a lot of dirt moving around that area, they were boring the phase three electric line into the landfill to bring that down the road. So that’s another step for the pumping system to be in place. So it’s slow and it’s really slow on rainy days and non-weather cooperative days, I guess, for the construction on both of those projects. But it’s happening. It’s moving forward. I’m excited that I think we’re still on track, maybe starting to lag a little bit behind because I think contractors often count on August as being hot and dry. And we’ve got the heat. I don’t know if we have the dry always lately, it seems like it’s an issue to deal with. One of those challenges. Always a delay. I know. Well, we did hit a stretch of like 11 days straight when it was dry. Wow. Got a lot. That was the middle part of July. Heavy rain before and heavy rain after, kind of puts a kibosh on there, but making some progress. Keep working at it. Let’s see. So we’ve got those household hazardous waste events coming up, otherwise, other things once you get into August, we’re just pretty well. Keep grinding through that in September, then we’ll have the next household hazardous waste collection on a Saturday one, excuse me, in October, we’ll be down at Madrid at St. Malachy’s. So September, do you do it? Because the seventh would be Labor Day. So fifth. Yep. Still being on the fifth. Still on the fifth. Okay. Yep. We’ll be closed Labor Day and then open back on Tuesday. So yeah, our Saturday, we regular hours on the fifth, so we’ll do the household collection. All right. Otherwise, we keep forging ahead. That’s right. Alrighty, John Rosa, landfill administrator, recycling coordinator, our guest on our program today. Thanks so much for joining us, getting us up to date on what’s going on as far as business out there and recycling. And right now, yes, we still have the same drop off, folks. It hasn’t changed yet, but again, follow the guidelines and continue to make use of it. Yep. Continue doing it and then doing it right. John Rosa, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you.