In an effort to give residents of Elmore County more options to dispose of debris, the Elmore County Collection Facility is expanding its hours and opening on a fourth day of the week.
The facility is open from 7 to 11 a.m. and noon to 3 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday and 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. Wednesday and Saturday.
“We shortened the hours on Saturday to help us deal with the heavy volume we deal with,” Elmore County Chief Operations Officer Richie Beyer said. “One of the issues we are having is making sure we have the collection facility in a position to accept debris with open bins.”
The facility was opened to the public in 2020 by the Elmore County Commission.
“The intent of this was for people who are paying for their residential service through the county’s service with Arrow,” Beyer said. “That also includes four municipalities that are participating– Deatsville, Elmore, Eclectic and Wetumpka.”
While the facility is increasing hours, county officials are trying to address an issue causing the site to be abused.
“We are not just getting residential debris,” Beyer said. “We are getting a lot of contractors or people they won’t say they are contractors. When you see a dump trailer come in multiple times during the month, it’s hard for someone to continue to have that much to clean out over time.”
The regulations for the Elmore County Collection Facility only allow those who pay for residential curbside garbage service in the county and in the participating municipalities to dispose of items too large to fit in a regular trash container like furniture, TVs, woody debris, unbagged grass clippings, mattresses, scrap metal and tires in designated areas.
The facility does not accept household garbage, oils, gasses, paints, shingles, lumber longer than four feet, propane tanks, gas tanks, appliances and car and boat batteries.
No dump trailers are allowed and contractors should use or rent their own dumpsters for construction projects.
“We cannot sustain having people bringing dump trailers into the facility dumping all over the ground,” Beyer said. “We have not started standing at the gate and just checking bills or checking addresses, but we have to start getting some kind of containment on that. It was intended to take the burden off the citizens that can’t get the stuff into their regular cans.”
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