The Flathead County Solid Waste Board on Tuesday voted to delay a decision on closing the Bigfork green-box refuse site for six months to allow Bigfork residents time to come up with an alternative plan for garbage collection in the bayside community.

In a separate action, the board voted to create a work group of four Bigfork area residents and two Solid Waste District staffers to work together and report back to the board in six months.

Several Bigfork residents said they would need more than six months to develop an alternative remedy, so the Solid Waste Board agreed the matter could be tabled again after six months if need be.

While the board’s action buys the Bigfork community some time, it doesn’t guarantee the county ultimately won’t close the Bigfork green-box site and consolidate it with the Creston and Somers refuse sites.

The closure of the Lakeside green boxes still is moving ahead as planned.

Solid Waste Board Chairman Hank Olson said the county intends to work toward a future goal of eliminating all rural green-box sites, though that may be in another 30 years or so.

“When the green-box sites no longer are feasible, we would put in tipping stations, one on the north end of the county and one on the south end,” Olson told a standing-room-only crowd at the landfill office.

He reminded the crowd that once garbage enters a green-box site it becomes the county’s responsibility and the county is liable for any accidents at the sites.

“We’re simply keeping the system flowing safely,” Olson said.

At the Bigfork green boxes, located on land leased from the Montana Department of Transportation along Montana 83, there’s no room to expand, county officials have long contended. Fencing the site would make it too small, and there have been longstanding problems with illegal dumping of hazardous waste and commercial garbage, county Public Works Director Dave Prunty said.

Consolidating the Bigfork and Lakeside sites and hiring three people to staff the Creston and Somers sites would save the county about $60,000 a year and provide the needed security.

Bigfork residents wanted a three-year moratorium on further green-box consolidation to allow time for the county to review a Solid Waste District strategic plan they believe is flawed and too narrow in scope.

“The study presents no compelling financial reason for closing” the Bigfork green-box site, said Paul Mutascio, who spoke on behalf of the Bigfork group. “Forcing people to curbside collection doesn’t work in rural areas ... it’s giving a financial windfall to [private] trash haulers, out of the pockets of the green-box users.”

Mutascio and other Bigfork residents noted a highway hazard they believe would be inevitable by closing the Bigfork site and consolidating it with the Creston site. There’s no turn lane to the site off Montana 35, and accidents are bound to occur, they said.

At an earlier Solid Waste Board meeting, several Bigfork residents also noted the hazard of increased traffic on Montana 82 if Bigfork green-box users are forced to drive to the Somers site.

Leases with the state for both the Bigfork and Lakeside sites were renegotiated in 2011 for another 10 years. The county pays $2,000 per year per site for the first five years, and then the lease can be re-evaluated by the state.

The county prefers to buy property for refuse sites, Prunty said, because leasing land brings with it a level of uncertainty for the future.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.