Good news about recycling center

There is good news of late on the status of the Evelyn Stover Recycling Center in Weiser. 

 It looks like the closure of the center after the WRRC left was temporary and WICAP will be taking over operations. 

 Weiser WICAP center director Steve Morningstar approached both the city and county about managing the facility. It’s a good thing for the community to keep the center going. 

 Between volunteers, people sentenced to community service, kids on probation and others, Morningstar thinks there should be enough help to keep the center functioning. 

 In covering the meetings on the recycling center, it has never been entirely clear to me which entity, the city or county, really has the final authority over the recycling center. 

 It appears to be an informal joint agreement, although the city and county profess not to claim ownership or responsibility for the recycling center.

 The city owns the property. The county put up the canvas canopy and has been subsidizing the operation with a couple of hundred bucks a month to guarantee that the volunteers that bale the cardboard and keep the center going earn something for their efforts. 

 Like commissioner Tom Anderson said at a recent meeting. Kicking in $300 or so a month to cover some costs is a small price to pay for a service that a lot of people use and support.

 Really, the city and county ought to be able to find a few thousand dollars in their budgets to cover any extraordinary expenses WICAP might have. Both the city and county give thousands of dollars annually in grants to local nonprofits. Why not add the recycling center to the list?

 Stay tuned on when the center will reopen to the public. Morningstar planned to meet with the city council on Tuesday night to discuss the center.

 Remember to save up your cardboard, newspapers, magazines, tin cans, aluminum and other stuff to bring to the recycling center. It will make the operation a little money and keep trash out of the landfill.

 If they can only find a way to recycle plastic. All those one-gallon bottles of water and milk jugs were going to China to be recycled until that country said no more to America’s trash.

 • • •

 Local historian Ken Walston has published his latest book in a series on Weiser history. 

 He combs city and county records and other primary research materials to come up with the most interesting stuff.

 Here’s a tidbit of Weiser history. Surprisingly, back in the day they rolled cigars in Weiser. Forget the Cuban stogies, the locals were puffing on 5-cent Weiser specials down at the corner saloon in 1892.

 Tobacco is today a southern crop, but local farmers were able to grow it as they experimented with cash crops.  According to Walston, there were not one but two cigar factories cranking out the stogies. Makes you wonder what happened to the local cigar business.

  It’s important to have someone like Walston curating the history of the community, so that it is not lost in our technology driven world, where we don’t seem to look back at all any more. It is all about the latest and greatest technology that promises to reshape the future. 

 Steve Lyon is the editor of the Weiser Signal American. Contact him at scoop@signalamerican.com