Your link didn't work. Would like to read your proposal. Definitely a great project. Wish you luck (in the future - don't give up) and maybe others can benefit from your ideas. I'd sure love to see my little city do it.

Hope you can repost your link.

Rosie, Sugar Hill, GA

Here so you do not have to register on the site is the item.

"City compost site...
Tom Latham, January 06, 2011

Locals will hate me. I went to the Rogers too, that was then and this is now. We need funding for a City Composting Center for leaves and debris to compost these into soil amendment. It would save the City more than $25K per year in landfill fees. It could offer mini-gardners, raised bed gardners, The Potato Project (food for the poor), and flower gardeners (city beautification) a benefical source of organic material. This will help everyone, not just the affluant. Green Earth ethics and simple recycling a valuable "waste" into a wonderful soil admendment will prompt more citizens to think Green and act accordingly. You can make Chicken Salad from Chicken Poop. I do it every day. "

daguvanuh,

I use city composted leaves. They look great when fully composted. There is one problem with the ones I have gotten. They have contained about 8 to 10 percent by bulk..small rocks. Why are there so many rocks. Surely they will run out of some of those rocks someday!!

Ya, once I got fully involved with the yard waste diversion for my local town, it's been, how should I put it, 'educational'.

Over 500 metric tonnes diverted this year at no extra cost to the town. Everyone wins.

I think your community is larger Tom but the concept ought to be the same.

Lloyd

2200 to 2500 tons is this years estimate.

The money people would rather have a few million bucks on restoration which would then have high ongoing running costs.
Your resource center had a setup cost of ?????.

Your resource center had an operational budget of ?????.

Was the man hours volunteer, part time employee, or full time staffed?
Love to hear a condensed version of your experience.

Setup - zilch but I already had the farm equipment required and the land. It isn't fancy but it does the job. I did buy a fgew extra things for fun but they weren't critical for the initial start-up.

Operational budget - I use about $500 extra worth of diesel fuel over regular farming activity.

Hours - I do most of the work on my days/time off but occasionally hire some student help when I fall behind due to weather. This year I kept up pretty well and only used about 50 hours of student labour.

Here is a small presentation I used for some officials. Here is a larger version (warning: get coffee first, it's got a lot of pics).

Nothing says a person has to do the active composting. Sheet composting all the materials is very cheap to do but the windrowing is more fun.

I could explain further but we might want to go off-line so as to not bore the masses (again).

Are you talking just leaves or is that the entire yard waste (grass clippings/garden stuff) amount?

Lloyd

Bore US???!!!! I AM ON THE EDGE OF MY SEAT, popcorn in hand.
You spread yard waste from Fall/Winter of 2005 & cut it in to decomposed by Oct.18,2006 & planted the same cell 1 & 2 in May of 2007.WOW!

Bore me all you want, I have a two row tractor & disk & a turn plow. I want to put in 500 asparagus crowns in beds in the Spring of 2013. No the beds are not made yet.

Really thank you for the reply.
Very good committment on your part.

I want/hope the city to dump vacuumed leaves in same area they have been using (but stay 500 ft from the river per EPA)..
With existing city equipment and/or obtaining surplus eguipment I think with a volunteer staff of 3 to 6 we can keep this windrowed, turned, screened if needed and dispensed to end user to allow space for next years inbound. With the $25K landfill tab even if expenses were $24,999 and compost were available for free to users is a great attribute rather than placement in the landfill.
The $40K "grant" would/could assist in and almost fund used screener, used Bobcat, and fenced covered area for eguipment storage.
The landfill deposit just sucks....... It makes my piles (appx 1000 cu yards of/when finished) more valuable and I should be happy about that. I was just doing this because the stuff was setting there, not as a futuristic occupation.

Thanks again Lloyd for your unselfish information and enjoyed looking at your experience..(but glad ours is vac'd not bagged also).. ..... Dag

what a good thing you are trying to do. i wish you the best of luck. our city did something like that a few years back. a local composting business took all the bags of leaves. the city picked up the plastic bags for one or two days only and dropped them off at the place. then, since it was plastic bags, they had to individually slice each bag open so they could compost the leaves inside. but something happened with the city and they dont do it anymore. if you are interested at contacting them for more information i am leaving you the link for their website. (incidentally, if you watch mantracker, the business owner has been the sidekick for mantracker in several episodes).
http://www.lemieuxcomposting.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=frontpage&Itemid=67