Mat-Su wins DEC waste reduction award

MAT-SU -- The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation commissioner last week presented the Mat-Su Borough Assembly with an award for outstanding achievement in waste reduction.

"I'm really, really pleased with the effort that went on up here . . . with the cleanup program," DEC Commissioner Michele Brown said when she presented the award. "By cleaning up junked cars and scrap metal, we increase property values, increase quality of life . . . and we also increase the life of our landfills."

The award was created in 1991 by the Alaska Legislature to provide public recognition of pollution prevention, waste reduction and recycling efforts. It is determined on an application basis, in which applicants must be in good standing with DEC and describe how their efforts contribute to source reduction or recycling, benefit the area environmentally, economically or by bettering public health, and how others can duplicate the program.

Ken Hudson, chief of code compliance for the borough, said this isn't the first time the department has applied for the award, and it isn't the first award the borough has received from DEC.

The borough received an award a few years ago for its air quality monitoring program, Hudson explained.

But past awards do not make this one any less valuable, he said.

Only one award is distributed each year, and Hudson said the award may prove useful in several ways.

"It serves as another public awareness tool," Hudson said. "It makes clear to the assembly and to other people in the community that this is something that is recognized statewide as a good thing."

That recognition, he explained, sometimes makes it easier, in times of tight budgets, to secure the funding needed to make sure the cleanup effort can continue.

"In the days of competing budget resources, it's a good thing," Hudson said. "It may help us in obtaining additional funding."

Hudson added that one of the most positive aspects of the award is that it gives a pat on the back to the many people who team together to make the boroughwide cleanups a success.

"It's a good 'atta-crew' for us," Hudson said.

Each year, several borough agencies, along with the Alaska National Guard, work together to bring together all the equipment and resources needed to pull the cleanup effort together, Hudson explained, then the community councils, Valley Community for Recycling Solutions, Mat-Su Property Owners, Friends of Mat-Su and many other Valley groups team up to staff dump stations, direct traffic and otherwise make the event successful.

"We really want to do everything we can to leverage this into more community support," Hudson said. "The real goal of this is to increase the quality of our neighborhoods."