Jun. 25—GOSHEN — Illegal dumping helped cost the city of Goshen two Elkhart County recycling centers. Is Goshen’s current site at the same risk?

Goshen Director of Public Works and Utilities Dustin K. Sailor verified by email Tuesday that dumping has been occurring at the Indiana Avenue recycling site. The security cameras set up there have been working, and penalties for illegal dumping have been assessed.

“A summary of assessed fines is 30 since the ordinance passed, with nine penalties assessed in June,” Sailor said. “From the penalties issued, 21 of the 30 are associated with persons with addresses outside of the city of Goshen. The offenses are Tier 1, which equates to a $175 fine (see Ordinance 5171). I do not have information on penalty payments or prosecutions.”

In 2021, the cities within Elkhart County attended a meeting where they learned from county officials that the recycling program wasn’t going as intended and they were in the process of eliminating the sites. Contamination issues contributed to the county closing down its recycling sites in 2023, including two in Goshen. Shortly afterward, Goshen agreed to put a recycling center in city limits and manage it themselves.

Although Elkhart County contributed $50,000 to the project, the city’s site is maintained solely by Goshen, which also did much of the labor in the construction of the location in-house, rather than contracting it out in order to save money, and the agreement was set for five years.

Sailor said that there has not been recent discussion about the site being taken away, but city staff tasked with cleaning up the site are frustrated.

“They are frustrated that people don’t follow the rules, choose to abuse the site, waste staff’s time when there are more important tasks to be completed, and risk the future of the site,” he said. “For the foreseeable future, it’s staff’s goal to make operational adjustments to encourage proper use of the site.”

Sailor added that one of the issues staff sees from the cameras is individuals mining materials from the containers.

“In collecting the materials valuable to them, they carelessly create a mess around the collection containers,” he said.

In addition, he said that the Goshen Police Department has advised several individuals that collecting recyclables from the site is not permitted.

“An action currently being taken to address the influx of recent dumping at the recycling site is the development of decals to be affixed to the dumpsters to highlight the site is being video-monitored and that fines are leveraged for dumping material outside the containers,” he said.

To learn more, visit goshenindiana.org/recycling.