Tri-County Solid Waste Agreements
Winnebago, Outagamie and Brown Counties

Foth was selected by the counties of Winnebago, Outagamie and Brown to lead the effort to form a Regional Solid Waste partnership which resulted in Disposal and Recycling Agreements. The two agreements had four major goals: to achieve econ-omies of scale, improve government to meet citizens' needs, maximize use of existing assets, and obtain operational savings.

Prior to the recycling agreement, Winnebago County handled paper, cardboard and co-mingled containers at their materials recovery facility. Outagamie County handled paper, cardboard and co-mingled containers, while Brown County handled co-mingled containers but sent the paper directly to a paper mill.

The end result is to have Winnebago County convert its recovery facility into a transfer station where collection trucks drop off loads to be consolidated, put in semi-trucks and shipped out. Outagamie County still will handle paper and cardboard and Brown County will recycle co-mingled containers.

Signing the Regional Solid Waste Disposal and Recycling Agreements took place in November 2001.

Challenges:

• All three counties had separate facilities but none were working at full capacity.
• To understand the barriers that existed to regionalization.
• Foth played a key role in getting all three counties to come together to work cooperatively and ultimately ink the groundbreaking intergovernmental agreements.

Benefits:

• The three counties together will save millions of dollars through the execution of the Regional Solid Waste Disposal and Recycling Agreements.
• The Recycling Agreement will save $8 million over 12 years and the Disposal Agreement will save $35 million over the next 25 years.
• Since all three counties own their own landfills, efficiency in disposal costs will be achieved by operating one landfill at a time while the other two function as transfer stations.
• Long-term disposal capacity for the citizens of the region.