Wind will soon be no match for recycling center

PALMER — With a $225,091 grant, the local recycling center says it hopes its facility will be safer and more useful.

“It’s getting this building to where we’re really up and going to the point where we were really looking to be when we built this building,” said Valley Community for Recycling Solutions Director Mollie Boyer.

The grant comes from the Rasmuson Foundation, which for decades has bolstered the efforts of nonprofits in Alaska. Indeed, the foundation funded VCRS first forklift, a skid-steer loader and a feasibility study before the organization built its current facility.

“They paid for that to show we could pay for our goals through this building and it showed that we can; we have a good plan,” Boyer said.

The foundation also one time paid to send Boyer on sabbatical.

The latest grant will extend the roof that’s currently over the loading area for the center and also enclose it with garage doors on either end. There will be two lanes for unloading recyclables.

If you’re wondering why the center needs such a renovation, Boyer said look no farther than the Knik winds.

“They’re really high velocity winds and then you add zero degrees to that for the wind chill factor,” Boyer said. “It hits the side of the building and then just shoots down and makes even more of a tunnel.”

Those winds have caused the center to close off the loading area both for the public’s safety and to keep materials from blowing away and turning into litter.

“We put vinyl on the east side of the drive through to try to reduce the wind impact, but it’s not nearly enough,” Boyer said.

The grant, she said, is related to another project the center is involved in — buying a paper baler to put inside the facility.

That baler project caused a bit of a dust-up at the end of last year when Boyer came to the borough assembly to request matching funds from the borough for a grant the center had received from the federal Economic Development Administration.

Eventually, Boyer and borough administration settled on a solution that was amenable to them both.

Boyer said the grants are connected in that both are, in some way, designed to increase capacity. A larger paper baler means the center can take in more cardboard. A larger loading area means more people per day can drop off their recyclables.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.