Improvements are being made to the Rocky Boy Reservation waste disposal methods. Ted Whitford the director of the Tribal Water Resource Department, which also manages waste disposal, explains the way waste is disposed currently.
“We have what we call a transfer site where essentially the customers will take their solid waste and dump it into the canisters along with what we already do. We pick up individual dumpsters and dump them at that site and then we have a transport truck that transports that waste to the Havre landfill. So essentially what’s happening is, because it’s not monitored, or not regulated people seem to dump anything everywhere in that area, and not so much in the canister. So, what that causes us to have to do is clean it up twice a year. We got to remember this is a transfer station, not a land fill. They’re kind of treating it like a landfill at this point. So, we want to change all that, that area to be neat and organized.”-Ted Whitford
Ted continues to explain ways to improve waste disposal on the reservation.
“There’s a number of things that we can already see, for instance customer billing is lacking right now or is very insufficient, and then the other thing is we need to improve those sights, meaning that the fence needs to be redone so we can contain that solid waste to that area, especially when the wind blows. We need to have a station there. It needs power, it needs fiber optics so we can put cameras there and hopefully in the future put a station there for the sight monitor, and then we also have to establish hours of operation, instead of it being open 24/7 365 days a year.” -Ted Whitford
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