Fire at Kilgore plant affects curbside recycling in Smith County cities

Published 5:40 pm Tuesday, June 18, 2024

Another Smith County city has announced its recycling program will be impacted after a destructive fire at a recycling center in Kilgore.

The City of Bullard released a notice on its Facebook page on Tuesday afternoon, noting recycling collection will be paused beginning Tuesday until further notice.

“This change is due to a structure fire at Rivers Recycling in Kilgore. The facility sustained significant damages and will be closed for repairs. Rivers Recycling was the current material recovery facility used by the City of Bullard to accept and repurpose recycled materials,” the City of Bullard stated.

Curbside recycling in Tyler and Whitehouse is also paused until further notice due to the fire, officials announced last week. 

In the City of Tyler, curbside recycling collection stopped on Monday, June 17. Rivers Recycling was also the material recovery facility used by the City of Tyler and City of Whitehouse to accept and repurpose curbside recycled materials.

Rivers Recycling is the only such facility between Dallas and Ruston, Louisiana.

In Tyler, any material collected from residential and commercial curbside recycling customers that continue to utilize the recycle cart will be taken to the landfill with the regular municipal waste collected. If the cart will continue to be used, it should be set out on its regular schedule.

If you need to cancel your Tyler curbside service, please contact the Solid Waste Office at (903) 531-1388 or SolidWaste@TylerTexas.com. The city said accounts will not be charged for the duration of the service pause.

The Recycle Center, located at 414 N. Bois D’Arc Ave., will continue to operate and is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturday from 8 a.m. to noon.

Below is the list of items accepted for residential and commercial customers who can bring recycled materials to the Downtown Recycle Center.

• Paper (newspapers, magazines, phonebooks, ads and office paper)
• Cardboard of any type (broken down)
• Plastic (rinsed and crushed #1 and #2 HDPE, lids removed; examples- water or soda bottles, milk jugs and detergent bottles)
• Glass (rinsed clear, green, blue and brown glass bottles and jars with lids removed) — No mirrors
• Ink Cartridges
• Electronics (computers, TVs, monitors, cell phones, chargers and other portable devices)
• Metal (copper, aluminum, brass and steel)
• Aluminum cans (rinsed and crushed, no aluminum pie plates or tin)
• Household appliances, including air conditioners and refrigerators, require a disposal fee
• Motor oil/hydraulic fluid (small quantities)
• Automotive batteries/anti-freeze (small quantities)

In Whitehouse, Republic Services will continue to collect the contents of curbside recycling carts which will be taken to the landfill until Rivers Recycling is able to rebuild. The city asks that on your normal trash collection day, residents should place both the recycle and trash carts in the usual collection location, but place the carts approximately 3 feet from each other. Trash and bulky item pickup schedules will remain unchanged during this time.

Firefighters remained on scene Thursday at Rivers Recycling, 298 FM 1252 W. in Kilgore, which caught fire Wednesday evening. Multiple fire departments responded beginning at 5:58 p.m. Wednesday, and the fire could continue burning until Friday, according to Kilgore Fire Department officials.

A fire that broke out in the facility’s main building filled the East Texas sky with a plume of black smoke that was visible for miles Wednesday evening.

Jason Skinner, Rivers Recycling’s general manager, said Wednesday that employees left at 5 p.m. Wednesday, and “everything was good.”

About an hour later, he said he learned about the fire. No employees were inside the facility when the blaze started.

Jeff Craine, president and CEO of Rivers Recycling, said Thursday that company officials are viewing the fire as an “opportunity to start fresh.” Craine owns the facility with his brother, Matt, and said they had plans to install new equipment within the next year.

“This will give us a clean slate to start over and come back stronger,” Jeff Craine said. “We’re excited about that.”

The cause of the fire in the facility’s 37,500-square-foot metal barn hasn’t been determined, and another week could pass before firefighters can get more information about the blaze, Craine said.

Kilgore Fire Marshal Ryan Riley said at the scene Wednesday that it was too large for firefighters to extinguish. The building collapsed, preventing crews from putting out the center of the inferno. Instead, they worked to keep flames from spreading to a nearby office building.

Opened in 2011, Rivers Recycling processes recyclable goods for the cities of Longview, Tyler and Kilgore as well as several East Texas businesses. Workers at the facility sort goods — including paper, plastic, aluminum and cardboard — and ship them throughout the U.S. to be made into new products, according to the company’s website.

Craine said he doesn’t know how long reconstruction will take, and employees are being encouraged to look for other jobs.

The fire isn’t expected to pose any public health concerns, as the materials in the facility likely wouldn’t release toxic chemicals when burned, a Texas Commission on Environmental Quality spokesman said Thursday. An agency investigator has been at the site of the fire, but no air quality monitoring has been conducted.