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After more than a year of reworking and refining, Arlington Heights’ Village Board has put a composting ordinance on the books.
The ordinance allows backyard compost piles that follow best practice guidelines and are sufficiently set back from property lines. Compost piles were never banned, nor were they ever explicitly allowed in the village.
The idea for an ordinance first came to light in late 2010, after residents starting raising a stink about the smells coming from neighbors’ compost piles.
The village decided to act, and began drafting an ordinance that was set for approval last February, but was sent to the Environmental Commission instead when gardeners complained that it would limit the three-bin system, a widely accepted composting practice.
The village and the composting crowd finally agreed, and the new ordinance passed Monday night, officially allowing composting in the village.
Kris Solger, an Arlington Heights resident who has practiced backyard composting for more than 15 years, said many neighbors don’t even know she has compost piles tucked away into the back corner of her yard behind some evergreen trees.
She was happy to see the ordinance finally fall into place.
“I think it’s perfectly reasonable,” she said.
The ordinance defines composting as a mixture of decayed or decaying organic matter used to fertilize soil and only allows bin composting and sheet composting, spreading a thin layer of organic material across a garden area.
The bins must be located in the side or rear yard and must be placed a minimum of 5 feet from the property line or 25 feet from neighboring homes.
Soil, grass clippings, waste sod, wood chips, shredded paper, egg shells, coffee grounds, straw, leaves, cooked or uncooked vegetables as well as small amounts of activators are acceptable, but the compost cannot contain any meat or meat products, fatty food, bones, animal feces, diseased plants, treated wood, manure or non-plant materials.
The ordinance calls for composters to turn the piles frequent to prevent smells or wild animal infestation and allows newer composting techniques to be employed if they are approved by the director of building and health services and the Environmental Commission.
The Arlington Heights Park District is exempt from the ordinance.
Found Here: http://triblocal.com/arlington-heights/2012/02/21/arlington-heights-regulates-composting-in-village/
