After a few bumps in the road and some insistent communications to San Juan County council members from Orcas Recycling Services supporters, the contract for operating the Orcas Island transfer station will be discussed, but not voted on, at the county council hearing today.

Absent a last-minute glitch, the council will schedule a public hearing with public testimony in August, followed by a council vote authorizing that the contract be signed and operations at the site be turned over to ORS a few weeks later.

“I don’t believe there will be any impediments to concluding the deal with ORS.,” said Frank Mulcahy, the county’s Director of Public Works, which is the agency responsible for privatizing the county dump sites on Orcas and San Juan islands.

After a failed property tax parcel fee in 2011, the six-person council decided to get the county out of the garbage and recycling business. Citizens on Lopez Island formed a statutory public waste disposal district in 2012 and are now operating the Lopez collection and recycling center, using funding provided by a property tax increase approved by Lopez voters. The county is now just concluding negotiations with Lautenbach Industries of Skagit County to operate the Friday Harbor-owned transfer station on Sutton Road on San Juan Island.

A contract for operation of the Orcas Island transfer site was the subject of a hard-fought competition between Orcas Recycling Services and Cimarron Trucking. ORS is the parent non-profit company of The Exchange, operator of the reuse and recycling center on Orcas that recently burned to the ground, but which is expected to be rebuilt and back in operation later this year or early next year.

Cimarron Trucking has been the designated hauler of garbage and recycling from Orcas under contract with Waste Management. That contract was extended on a month-by-month basis until ORS takes over operations at the facility, expected by the end of September, according to Mulcahy.