Lightning strike disrupts county waste station operations

Garth Meyer, Gazette Reporter | Aug 03, 20170

Whitman County's Public Works department had to adjust the operation of the solid waste transfer station in the past three weeks due to a lightning strike July 15 that burned out electronics, including the commercial scale and two others.

On the early Saturday morning that lightning hit, David Nails, County Solid Waste operations manager, arrived to cover a shift and found that three of the four scales were out. An older, non-digital one in the residential dumping section still worked.

Readerboards were also down along with computers, docking stations, a printer and internet routers.

Unitek of Seattle, who has a contract for site certification and also installed the scales at the transfer site during the remodeling two years ago, arrived two days after the strike and fixed two of the scales.

The scale used for weighing commercial trucks remained offline, and commercial haulers July 17 were routed to the residential scale. That caused added congestion at the site.

Parts for repair of the commercial scale were expected to arrive Wednesday.

“Hopefully we'll be back to normal by the end of the week,” said Nails.

A county Public Works employee, Jeff Marshall, has repaired the computers, replacing some small items as needed such as docking stations and battery backups.

The estimated cost to restore the total damage to the transfer station is yet unknown.

“I don't think it will be more than $5,000,” Nails said.

It is thought to be the first time a lightning strike has affected the waste transfer site.

Once the operation is back to normal, the Public Works Department will work to write a policy for future situations.

“You have to have a policy in place when you can't weigh anything. We will need to create one,” Public Works Director Mark Storey said.

The plan would likely set a default minimum charge which would not require weighing the load, similar to the system used during fall and spring cleanup.