04/27/2026
Just a few comments on the garbage service that is provided for the Rural community; The County Waste and Recycling Dept. was designed to handle the Rural peoples everyday garbage and recycling, with that in mind there is a difference between a garbage business and a garbage service, we do not have any trucks or landfills to run to when we are full and we work with very few employees to keep expenses down for the tax payer.
A garbage business is designed to take large amounts of garbage and debris and has several trucks and employees to haul them to landfills where they are contracted to haul endless loads of debris.
We are a garbage service not a garbage business and are supposed to be for Rural residents only as they are the only tax that we use for this service so through the years we have morphed into taking debris from the cities and then charge a small amount to city residents to make up for the difference.
Between Friday afternoon and Saturday we filled a compactor box in less than 10 hours of work time, that is an average of a Ton per hour and hasn't happened in 24 years but has happened twice in the last two weeks, so I think we need to go over what should actually come to the Solid Waste site.
We are not here to run anyone's business refuse for them, we are not able to handle everyone's total house clean outs when their relatives pass away, we can't handle farm clean ups and large decks that get dismantled or sheds and trailer houses that need disposing.
Are goal is to handle every Rural persons regular household garbage and recycling and to keep the Rural sites around the County going into the future and when it becomes fiscally out of reach with hauling companies to hire it out, we will do the service ourselves if it pays to do so.
We intend to continue to receive small projects such as a bathroom remodel with toilets and so forth. The town people will continue to bring small amounts of projects and a couch or lazy boy for a fee. If you use the service we provide we feel that one trip a week is sufficient for your needs and would hope you don't come
three and four times a week so we can keep unnecessary traffic to a minimum especially on Saturdays.
For large amounts of anything there are many alternatives for people: Hirth's Junk Removal has a dumpster service from Waukon and Richards Sanitation along with Republic Sanitation have dumpsters available and if you want to haul your own large projects Richards Sanitation in Caledonia MN and Waste Management in Prarie Du Chien have drive in dumping available.
Lastly we have looked into a Transfer Station for the county but we are looking at close to 2 million dollars for such a service and that type of funding is not available at this time so lets try to use the services we have with some common sense.
Thank you
Dave Mooney, Solid Waste Manager
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