Recycling isn't dead yet in Kanawha County.
The Kanawha County Commission is giving the Kanawha County Solid Waste Authority $25,000 that will be matched by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection.
"We were ready to shut down, honestly," said James Young, the executive director of the Solid Waste Authority. "It would have been devastating to the county and our employees, but the crisis has been averted."
The $50,000 should keep the Solid Waste Authority up and running as it looks toward finding a building to serve as a processing facility.
Before the grant, the authority only had about $6,000 in the bank.
In meetings with the cities of Charleston and South Charleston, Young was able to secure an agreement in which the Solid Waste Authority would get money from both cities after it gets a processing facility up and running. That agreement is subject to approval by city councils in both cities.
Currently, both cities have to send their recycling to Beckley, which Charleston city officials estimate costs about $800 a week.
With low revenue for recyclable products, Young is hoping that cities begin to help subsidize the cost.
"The thing that we want people to realize," Young said, "is that recycling is not free."
Young said that the two cities will contribute 70 percent of what the Solid Waste Authority needs and he hopes to get the rest from other cities.
In order to get this funding, the Solid Waste Authority will have to secure a building where it can process recyclables.
But finding a building could take months and the group's original plan of building a new facility has been put on the back burner.
The DEP officially turned down Young's attempt to use leftover grant money to buy a building, but he can still use that money to get new equipment. Instead, he'll have to apply to the Solid Waste Management Board for a loan that will take more than six months to secure for the structure.
"At the end of the day, we have to be able to afford the loan payment every month," Young said.
The Kanawha County Commission and DEP money will help sustain the Solid Waste Authority while it pursues the next step.
The $25,000 the county is contributing isn't too much more than what the county commission has been giving the Solid Waste Authority for the past 10 years, Kanawha commissioner Dave Hardy said.
Since 2006, the Kanawha County Commission has given the Solid Waste Authority $244,000.
Young is also being considered for a position in the county planning department, which would pull him off the Solid Waste Authority payroll. That would save the group about $5,000 a month, per Young's estimates.
If he gets hired, he'd work part time for the county and part time with the Solid Waste Authority until the group transitions to a new director.
Part of the reason the Solid Waste Authority has been so dependent upon public funding is because the recycling market is bad.
"Some of these things you don't have any control over and one of those things is the demand for the product," Hardy said.
But with the market so low, Young is hoping to create a business model addressing present needs.
"It's at the bottom, so you wouldn't think that the market could get worse," Young said.
But Dave Hardy is optimistic about the future of the authority.
"I can see the end of the tunnel with your organization," Hardy said. "You have come a long, long way."
Reach Daniel Desrochers at dan.desrochers@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-4886 or follow @drdesrochers on Twitter.