Health Department, Compost Center Get Reprieves

Despite near-death experiences, the bi-county Board of Health and the
Lehigh County compost remain in business after getting reprieves from
Lehigh County Commissioners Wednesday.

Commissioners voted unanimously to give the Lehigh County Organics
Recycling Center in Schnecksville a six-month extension so municipalities
that bring yard waste there have time to form a cooperative to take control
of it. The county told the localities in August that it was getting out of
the yard waste business by year's end but said the local governments could
have the site if they can organize an authority to run it.

Commissioner William H. Hansell said the municipalities need more time to
work out an agreement and they will pay enough in fees so that there will
be "no net cost to the county" during the extension. The county isn't
legally required to offer the services of accepting branches, grass and
other yard waste but 11 of the largest municipalities are. The county had
been subsidizing the cost of running it to the tune of about $250,000 a
year.

During the fall, the 24 municipalities who use the site or its two
satellites in Upper Saucon and Washington townships complained that the
Dec. 31 deadline wasn't enough time to find or create an alternative place
to take residents' yard waste. Hansell warned Wednesday that the new June
30 deadline is absolute.

The Lehigh Valley Board of Health might have less time to prove its worth.
An ordinance to withdraw Lehigh County from the bi-county health board was
tabled on a 5-4 vote but commissioners could have another crack at it on
Jan. 10.

That's when the Lehigh Valley Health Commission – which is composed of
Lehigh County Commissioners and Northampton County Council --  meets to
reorganize. Northampton County Council voted 5-4 last week to allow the
volunteer health board to continue studying the creation of a regional
health department, so long as it doesn't cost the county. Lehigh County
Commissioners Chairman Dean Browning said he feared Lehigh County might be
left to form its own health department, which could be expensive.

"We know how government programs go," Browning said. "They start out small,
they never go away and they continue to grow. We need to be focused on our
core responsibilities."

Last July, legislators from both counties rejected a $10 million budget for
the new health department. Each county would have had to pay $500,000 of
that and the state and private foundations would have picked up the rest.

On Wednesday, Commissioner Percy Dougherty was the only Republican to join
the four Democrats in voting to table the ordinance that would have killed
the health board.  Dougherty said he'd like to see the hospitals chip in
more funds to create the health agency but a vote to kill it was
"premature."