Site visits and wood recycling surge at Kootenai County transfer stations, staff say

County staff told commissioners April 7 that transfer station traffic and tonnage have risen this year, driven by mild weather, storm debris cleanup and population growth, and that a network outage likely undercounted some transactions.

Angela, who presented the quarterly statistics, said Ramsey site visits were up 12.3% and tonnage up 10.7% for January–March, while Prairie customers and tonnage were both up 9.6% (with Prairie at historic highs for that period). She said county landfill tonnage was up 11.3 — "over 5,000 more tons" year‑to‑date — and rural site visits at Apple and Chilco were up 7.4% with tonnage up 3.4%.

Angela highlighted a striking increase in wood debris: Ramsey received 683 tons of wood in the comparable 2025 period versus 2,150 tons in 2026 — about a 215% increase. She said the county recycles the wood: a contractor grinds and hauls the material to Lewiston for processing.

Commissioners asked for reasons; staff pointed to the mild winter, growth, December storm debris, and a roughly 24‑hour network outage that prevented some transactions from being captured (some large loads were recorded with hand tickets). Phillips and Angela encouraged use of a planned quick‑drop site opening on or before April 15 to reduce lines for small loads.

No public comments or votes were recorded at the meeting.