OTTUMWA — Preventing future contamination is always uppermost in the minds of the Ottumwa/Wapello County Solid Waste Commission (SWC) members.

Diverting household hazardous materials (HHM) from the landfill means cleaner groundwater and a Regional Collection Center (RCC) can help.

What falls under the HHM label? Many of the items under your kitchen sink, in the bathroom, garage, or workshop certainly do. The list includes glass cleaner, drain-opening products, pesticides, furniture polish, oven cleaner, paint, glue, adhesives, brake fluid, transmission fluid, moth balls, nail polish and remover and so many more.

An RCC is a public-owned facility run by the county or city and it covers a county. It’s a place where residents can take household hazardous materials at no charge and small businesses can take their business chemicals, according to Kathleen Hennings of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (IDNR).

Hennings oversees IDNR’s program for collection and handling of household hazardous materials and was a guest speaker at the March SWC meeting.

At Wednesday’s meeting, SWC Director Jody Gates said she and Commissioners Greg Kenning and Gordon Aistrope and Recycling Coordinator Janice Bain toured the Iowa City collection center.

“I liked the way things were set up. Their RCC was located at the Iowa City Landfill and Recycling Center and customers could drop off household hazardous materials by appointment three days a week,” Gates said.

Commissioner Greg Kenning was impressed with the operation. He had envisioned workers wearing heavy-duty haz-mat suits.

“But all the guy had on was safety goggles. That’s it. And he wore regular rubber gloves, not the industrial-strength kind,” he said.

While the local team was there, an Iowa City employee met customers at their vehicle and collected items on a rolling cart, which was rolled into a sorting building and sorted immediately if there was time, Gates said. If the worker was too busy, the items were left on the cart and sorted later.

“Iowa City has a swap shop area attached to the sorting building. The shop was for materials that were collected but could be useful to others,” Gates said. “While sorting, employees would pull out nearly full bottles of spray cleaners, glass cleaners, floor cleaners and ammonia and put those on shelves in the swap shop.”

Everything in the swap shop was available to customers at no charge, she added. Iowa City employees indicated most materials in the swap shop “were snapped up” by customers. The only exception was paint.

“For some reason their used paint wasn’t very popular, which is interesting because our recycling center gives away a lot of used paint,” Gates said.

Adjacent to the Iowa City RCC was a dedicated space for educational presentations. There also was another building where nonprofit organizations collected and sold items like old furniture, architectural building items and used building materials.

Hennings had told the commission that IDNR has a grant program for building RCCs. The grant is $100,000 and no match is required from those who build a facility.