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Bloomington Chooses Local Firm to Manage Study on Waste Processing Facility

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The Monroe County Solid Waste Management Board has approved contracting with local firm Kessler Consulting for a feasibility study on a mixed waste processing facility, also known as a MRF.

In the Board’s meeting last week, Solid Waste Management District Executive Director Tom McGlasson, Jr., said Kessler’s $84,000 bid was chosen over four other firms in part because of the firm’s  unique experience: “In the end, there was one that did have a unique experience that dealt with college and university-driven towns similar to Bloomington. Given the waste characterization study aspect of our project and looking to differentiate and distinguish those waste characterizations from the city and the university, Kessler Consulting had experience doing just that type of thing.”

Board member and Bloomington Mayor, John Hamilton, said the city is also consulting with the Kessler firm on its sanitation automation initiative:
“To date, we’ve been very pleased with them. I actually think that’s kind of a nice extra linkage, too; we have someone who is going to be pretty familiar with the city system, so that may be helpful.”

Hamilton said Kessler promised to dig deeper than its closest competitor in the bidding process: “I also noted that the MSW offered to do a kind of a… data-driven analysis aggregate, rather than on the ground. But Kessler was very impressive and they actually had the most detail about our situation now and showed the need to dive deeper.”

Board member Steve Volan asked McGlasson if the same team would be working on both the city and county projects. McGlasson said he did not know at this time: “I was aware of the City’s relationship with Kessler. We did have some discussions with Adam Lawson concerning his experience and their experience with Kessler leading up to their contract. Unfortunately, we did not compare project members; so I can’t answer that question at this time.”

The feasibility study is expected to be conducted over 8 months.

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