A new slate of disposal fees will soon be on the table, including a fee for recycling.

In a 4-2 decision, the San Juan County Council passed a resolution July 27 giving Public Works the go-ahead to create a proposal that would put a price on the disposal of items for which the department at this point does not collect. Councilmen Howie Rosenfeld, Friday Harbor, and Bob Myhr, Lopez/Shaw, voted against the resolution.

At town hall, however, town Administrator King Fitch said the prospect of a recycling fee, or “gate fee”, is encouraging. The county pays roughly $300,000 to dispose of recycled materials and, he noted, that cost gets added into the price the county tries to recoup through its tipping fees.

“I’ve been on that bandwagon for years,” Fitch said of a fee for recycling. “Any movement we can get to lighten the load on tipping fees and get people back into using the system would be a positive step. All sorts of communities seemed to be doing it and people are still recycling.”

In addition to commingled recyclables, the county collects and disposes of batteries, noxious weeds and litter gathered during sanctioned beach or roadside cleanup projects at no charge.

If approved, those fees are intended to bolster a solid-waste operation that’s awash in red ink.

The Department of Public Works began the year with a $563,000 shortfall in the solid-waste “capital” account and is struggling to cover the day-to-day costs of the operation in the face of a steep decline in the amount of garbage collected in the past 24 months. Financed almost exclusively by tipping fees, the price paid to dispose of garbage, Public Works collected roughly $300,000 less in revenue in 2009 than it did the previous year, as roughly two million fewer pounds of garbage were disposed of countywide.

The proposed fees will be considered County Council for approval at a public hearing, the date of which has yet to be determined. County Solid Waste Manager Steve Alexander said expects the council will discuss the fee proposal several times prior to the public hearing.

According to Public Works, a combined 133,000 customers pass in and out of the solid-waste facilities on Lopez, Orcas and San Juan islands each year and, of those, roughly 80,000 don’t pay for services they use, such as recycling. The department recommends capturing additional revenue through a $3 “gate fee”, which would be waived for those disposing of garbage.

Public Works must also contend with the loss of $165,000 or more in revenue — for the remainder of the year — that the town would have paid to dispose of its garbage at the San Juan solid-waste facility. Town officials recently opted to bypass the Sutton Road facility and to take its garbage instead to the mainland for disposal.

Historically, town garbage accounts for roughly 14 percent of the yearly revenue collected by the county solid-waste division overall, which in 2008 topped $2.4 million, and last year the town disposed of 12,660 pounds of recyclable glass and paper products at Sutton Road.