Crews will not be able to accept all the items they have in past years.
AUBURN – City crews will collect brush, wood and appliances during spring cleanup this year but not bulky items such as furniture.
A surplus in the city’s waste collections budget is enough to keep the cleanup going for another year. Assistant City Manager Mark Adams said staff has been working to keep the program alive since the City Council adopted its budget last summer.
“The City Council charged the staff to see what we could do to modify the program and still be able to provide some kind of spring cleanup,” Adams said.
The city has been able to save about $11,000 in waste collections this year, Public Works Director Bob Belz said. That’s enough to pay for a limited spring cleanup.
According to Belz’ proposal, the city will only collect things that can turn a profit, such as scrap metal, old appliances and clean scrap lumber and brush. The brush and lumber can be chipped up and sold to biomass generators around the East Coast and the old stoves and other appliances can be broken down into scrap metal and sold.
“If we can make it disappear at good cost to the city, we would take it,” Belz said.
But homeowners will have to get rid of the rest of the refuse on their own. Bulky trash such as furniture and mattresses, tires, computer monitors, propane tanks and hazardous wastes won’t be collected.
“The best thing about this plan is that we would still collect the items people leave out most often,” Belz said.
Auburn property owners can take the other items to Mid-Maine Waste Action Corp. themselves for $85 per ton, Belz said.
“We’ve only had spring cleanup for about six years now,” Adams said. “Before then, we had a landfill. And somehow, the materials were always able to get there.”
Spring cleanup is scheduled to begin April 26 and continue into May.
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