Bonneville County’s Hatch Pit prices may increase

Bonneville County is having an increasing amount of problems with the Hatch Pit, and it may come out of your pocket.

The Hatch Pit is filling up faster than the county anticipated. They say it’s partially due to last year’s storms and the disposing of roofing material.

The Hatch Pit is mostly used as a site for demolition and construction waste.

The county held a hearing where more than 50 concerned community members attended.

A lot of the people were contractors or people working with some sort of home building company.

“The things is we have people who call us all the time for when they do spring cleaning or if they want to do a little remolding in their basements, etc.” Dump-It owner Curtis Johnson said. “How this will affect people is that now they are going to have multiple dumpsters on site. They will have to be able to sort different items or they will incur a $90 to $300 landfill fee.”

“It was expressed in the hearing that we are in the business of taking the waste and not managing it,” Bonneville County Commission Chairman Roger Christensen said. “If they don’t sort it to keep the volume down we have to hire new staff. We are trying to encourage the private sector, builders, and the people who are using it and filling it up to sort at the sources because that is a better way to do it.”

There is one way you can help and is by recycling.

“They are trying to get us to separate things more,” Johnson said. “I think that’s great and I think that we all need to learn how to recycle more. Whatever we do, we are trying to do is extend the life of the Hatch Pit.”

The county hopes that by recycling they will be able to extend the life of the Hatch Pit by a year or two.

As of right now, the added fees will take effect on June 1st.

The county is still open to suggestions on methods to save the pit without having to cost so much.

If no other plan is presented then the fees will stay in effect.