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Hazardous waste event set for next weekend

Commercial-News - 9/22/2018

Sept. 22--DANVILLE -- Residents will have an opportunity next week to get rid of household hazardous wastes from their garages and basements.

A free collection event will take place from 8 a.m. until 3 p.m.Sept. 29 in the large parking lot in front of Danville Area Community College.

The last time a household hazardous waste collection was offered in Danville was 11 years ago, according to Douglas Toole, public health administrator of the Vermilion County Health Department.

"We applied to the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency for this collection event back in 2007," he said. "It's a very popular program and it's very competitive."

Household hazardous waste collection events also are very expensive to orchestrate.

"It costs tens of thousands of dollars," Toole said. "But because the IEPA is paying for it, the cost to the county is very small."

He encouraged residents from all over east central Illinois to participate in the collection event because it might be years before the area has another one.

"I look at it as a state collection. Anyone from Illinois -- Edgar, Douglas, Champaign counties -- is welcome to come," Toole said. "If we have a low to moderate turnout, our application might sit another 10 years."

The contractor at the event will accept oil-based paints, used motor oil, old gasoline, fluorescent lamp bulbs, expired or unwanted medicines, household batteries, pool chemicals, herbicides, pesticides, cleaning products, antifreeze, mercury, lawn chemicals and drain cleaners.

The contractor will not accept TVs or computer monitors; sharps, needles and potentially infectious medical waste; car batteries; tires; fire extinguishers; business waste or agricultural chemicals; controlled substances; smoke detectors; propane tanks or other pressurized fuel and gas tanks; or fireworks, ammunition or explosives.

Latex paint is not considered hazardous and can be safely dried or absorbed and left out with regular trash.

A full list of the acceptable and unacceptable items is located at www.vchd.org and on the Vermilion County Health Department's Facebook page.

To ensure that traffic flows smoothly the day of the event, volunteers from the Vermilion County Health Department, Keep Vermilion County Beautiful and DACC will be on-site to help direct traffic and collect donations to help support future collection and beautification projects.

"The big traffic is in the morning," Toole said. "Traffic might get looped through campus and exit to the east of there.

"If we didn't have DACC with its enormous campus and knowledgeable staff, we wouldn't be able to do this," he added.

"Danville Area Community College is committed to providing quality learning experiences, but we are also part of the community," David Kietzmann, executive vice president of instruction and student services at DACC, said in a press release. "We enjoy opportunities to host events like this that will benefit so many people."

"Too often, these waste items end up in our basements or garages, taking up space and creating hazards to ourselves and to the environment," Brenda Adams, executive director of Keep Vermilion County Beautiful, said in a press release. "This is a way to ensure that those items are disposed of properly."

The IEPA sponsored its first household hazardous waste collections in November 1989. Since then 401,350 households have participated in 449 events, with more than 78,100 drums of material collected.

The IEPA, which provides funding for the event, will have representatives on-site to help oversee the event.

The Danville collection event is one of five that the IEPA is sponsoring this fall. The others are located in Princeton, Vandalia, Oswego and Decatur.

DACC will host an electronics collection event on Saturday, Oct. 27, for county residents to get rid of unwanted TVs, computer monitors and similar items.

Those with expired or unwanted pills can dispose of them in drop-off bins in Hoopeston City Hall, Westville Village Hall, the Veterans Affairs Illiana Healthcare Systems hospital in Danville and at OSF Sacred Heart Medical Center in Danville.

IF YOU GO

A free household hazardous waste collection event will take place from 8 a.m. until 3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 29, in the large parking lot in front of Danville Area Community College.

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(c)2018 the Commercial-News (Danville, Ill.)

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