The Decatur County Board of Commissioners unanimously voted Tuesday to lift Bainbridge’s suspension on the county landfill.
The suspension was originally delivered via email from Decatur County Administrator Gary Breedlove to Bainbridge City Manager Chris Hobby in April 2014 after the Bainbridge City Council accepted a low bid from a private company, Waste Management, in Campbellton, Florida, to dump their solid waste.
Commissioner Pete Stephens made the motion.
“It’s a good time to make that gesture so that we can bridge that gap—the contention between the city and county,” Decatur County Chairman Dennis Brinson said.
Tipping fees for Bainbridge trucks, should they choose to use the landfill, have not been discussed yet.
Breedlove said with the transition with the board—new commissioners Stephens, George Anderson and Rusty Davis, who began their terms earlier this month—it made sense to lift the suspension.
If Bainbridge wanted to use the Decatur County landfill to dispose of inert waste such as limbs and bushes, Breedlove said it could be there for their use.
“It’s expensive to take that to Campbellton as solid waste,” Breedlove said. “If they have a load at 3:30 in the afternoon, it’s not likely they can get to Campbellton, offload and get back home on a normal duty schedule, but they can certainly go 17 miles to our place and back, if they choose to use it.”
The trip to Campbellton is a round trip of 106 miles.
In November, Bainbridge projected it would save more than $180,000 in the first year of using their own waste transfer station and Waste Management, based on estimates from their initial two months of operation.