County Engineer Darryl Lutz met with the Butler County Commission last week to discuss two items concerning electronic waste collected by the county before returning Monday to discuss promotional materials for this waste.
The first of those items presented last week was a request to approve a Memorandum of Understanding with Unicorp, a company of the federal prison system located in Leavenworth, concerning the recycling of the collected waste. Lutz told the commission such a document is generally only considered at the staff level, but he wanted to present it to them to have it formally acknowledged in their record.
The document allows for the processing of electronic waste (E-waste) at the landfill and contains a number of compliance statements for the handling of that waste in regards to the sensitive data that can be present in some cases, such as with harddrives that still have CPUs in them. With that in mind, any handling by a third party of such waste would mandate they be certified.
Lutz told the commissioners the county would document that the waste had been passed on to the third party and they would in turn notify the waste had been collected. That group would then recycle as much of the waste as they could and destroy what they couldn’t. Transportation of the waste would be provided at no expense as long as a trailer load would be provided.
Lutz said the memorandum will be sent out to Leavenworth and if the county decided to terminate that understanding, they could do so within the first 30 days. He added they are still aiming to begin E-waste on Dec. 1.
Commissioner Randy Waldorf expressed concern about the concept of the prison system handing potentially sensitive material whether or not they had certification. Lutz said it was a pilot program but pointed to other E-waste programs currently functioning as examples that the system has been shown to work. He said they also have to be certified.
The rest of the commission shared that concern but passed the motion to approve the document on a 4-1 vote with Waldorf voting against approval. Lutz told Waldorf he would try to secure more information concerning his security concerns to help him.
“I’m sure it’s fine, something just doesn’t sit right with me and sometimes you have to go with your gut,” Waldorf said.
The second item was an amendment concerning the grant contract for the E-waste program, which would provide an extension of six months to enable them to get the project costs finished. This was approved 5-0.
