Three years after Flathead County proposed closing Bigfork’s trash site, a new and improved green-box container site opened Monday.

“We’re up and running and things are going smoothly,” Public Works Director David Prunty said.

The site just past the intersection of Montana 35 and 83 (behind Crossroads Church and the Lone Pine Cemetery) will be open seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Along with being staffed, the site has an improved recycling system. There are two large blue bins — one for plastics and aluminum and the other for paper. There is also a cardboard compactor.

The new site comes with new regulations.

Trash can only be dumped at the site during staffed hours and no salvaging or scavenging is allowed. The site is for residential use only. There is a spot for metals to be recycled, although the county stressed that items such as mattresses, tires and oversized waste must be taken to the landfill, not the container site.

At a meeting in Lakeside recently, Prunty said that since the county has begun staffing container sites, it has been able to crack down on illegal and commercial dumping, causing waste tonnage to go down 33 percent.

The Columbia Falls site was the first that the county staffed and set up with the improved recycling system. Rita Blair, who is now the attendant at the Bigfork site, worked at the Columbia Falls site when it opened. She said she has seen a huge difference with the sites that are staffed.

“People tend not to put something on the ground,” she said. And if people drop something, they tend to pick it up since they know the site is monitored, she said.

Garbage trucks will come twice a day to empty the containers.

Recycling bins are taken to Valley Recycling, however Blair said that if the containers are clearly filled with materials that Valley Recycling doesn’t accept, the whole contents of the container goes to the landfill.

“If they’re going to recycle, they need to do it right or don’t do it at all,” she said.

Blair, who grew up in Bigfork, said the new site was slow on opening day as they transitioned, but it was busy Tuesday morning.

Flathead County originally proposed closing both the Bigfork and Lakeside container sites as part of a consolidation plan three years ago. However, pushback from both communities prompted the Solid Waste Board to consider other options.

The county decided to move forward with the Bigfork site first because of safety concerns at the previous location. Lakeside’s site should be completed this time next year.

While both communities will get to keep their container sites and have them improved, that comes at a cost.

The county has established a special fee area to pay for the construction and the ongoing maintenance. The special fee will be assessed in addition to the $80.73 property owners already pay annually on their tax bills for the landfill.

The Bigfork fee area includes the Bigfork elementary and Swan River school district boundaries.

The initial special fee estimate was about $39.75, however the special fee won’t appear on tax bills until November 2016 to allow time for the county to get firm numbers on costs.

While the fee will fluctuate as expenses change and more homes are built within the district, Prunty said he thinks the estimate is pretty good.

Paul Mutascio, president of the Community Foundation for a Better Bigfork, was at the forefront of the communities fight to keep a green-box site in Bigfork. He is pleased the new site is finally open.

“I greatly appreciate all the effort the community put in,” Mutascio said. “I’d also really like to thank the Solid Waste Board and Dave Prunty and Jim Chilton for listening and responding and they great work they did putting it together.”

The old Bigfork container site is now closed. The property, which belongs to the Montana Department of Transportation, will be monitored by Flathead County Solid Waste for six months to prevent illegal dumping.  

The new Bigfork green-box site will be closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas.