Believe it or not, it will eventually be warm enough to clean out your garage; and when that happens, homeowners may find some household hazardous waste which survived the winter and needs to be disposed of.

Rick Hurt is with the South Central Iowa Solid Waste Agency, which covers a four-county area including Marion County; they operate a site near Tracy, and will have several pick-up dates in Pleasantville during the year.

Hurt tells KNIA/KRLS News they’ll take anything which could pose a hazard to your home; some items can be rendered safe, such as empty aerosol cans or latex paint which has been solidified…but others should be left to them.

“Oil-based paint is a whole different story; there is hazards to that, it’s usually combustible or flammable. And we’ll take that from residents at no charge, as part of our household hazardous waste program,” Hurt says.

“But all the rest of your chemicals, pool chemicals…a lot of what we get will be aerosols; they’re hazardous, they’ve got flammability to them, so they’re a hazardous substance. We’ll take that off of our customers.”

Hurt says winter won’t have much effect on items a homeowner would be disposing of; you can bring most items to them for disposal, and anything they can’t handle will be shipped off to Metro Waste Authority, a Bondurant-based company which specializes in handling such materials.