Posted: Tuesday, August 2, 2011 11:36 pm

Brush recycling area had worried neighbors
By SUSAN LEATHERS
Brentwood Home Page
Inglehame homeowners can breathe a little easier. The BREA as they know it is probably no more.

On Tuesday, City Manager Mike Walker shared with city commissioners, Park Board members and others who attended a work session to discuss the master plan for the city’s new Marcella Vivrette Smith Park that a new option for a brush recycling environmental area had been identified.

Citizens attending a July 21 work session to discuss the BREA planned within park's boundaries voiced concerns and objections to the two-acre area which would be used to process and store the chipped wood collected from the city’s curbs. Not only would a BREA within the park save the city the multiple costs of hauling the roughly chipped material to the county landfill, the chips could be processed into mulch for the park’s anticipated eight miles of hiking and biking trails.

“We went back and started to look at some other locations,” Walker said. After review, it was determined that a BREA on a smaller scale could be located at the city’s Service Center on Gen. George Patton Road in the Cool Springs area. The area currently houses the Brentwood Police Department’s auto impoundment lot which, if reworked, could work for the BREA.

Walker told those gathered that he had called Police Chief Ricky Watson last week to see if together they could make it work at that site. Though it would be smaller site than the one planned in Smith Park and have more limitations, “the real plus is that’s where the (chipper) trucks operate from,” Walker explained.

“It gains a lot of economies for us. Quite frankly, I was having indigestion thinking about spending $600,000 on BREA at the park,” he continued.

Site restrictions at the Service Center would prevent a tub grinder from being used, which would mean the city would have to buy mulch for the park trails, estimated at $10,000 a year. Still, the overall cost savings would be worth it, Walker said.

Click here for BHP’s report from the BREA work session.