Carbon County municipalities should soon see some green from the trash that was collected in 2013.

The county commissioners on Thursday voted to approve an addenda to 10 municipal waste disposal agreements to eliminate the $4 per-ton tipping fee, retroactive to Jan. 1.Facilities with the agreements include Alliance Sanitary Landfill, Taylor; Commonwealth Environmental Systems, Hegins; Environmental Awareness Corporation, Tamaqua; Grand Central Sanitary Landfill, Pen Argyl; Keystone Sanitary Landfill, Dunmore; Lehigh Valley Recycling Center, Coplay; Phoenix Resources Landfill, Wellsboro; Pioneer Crossing Landfill, Birdsboro; Wayne Township Landfill, McEllhattan; and White Pines Landfill, Millville.Carbon County Commissioner William O'Gurek said the county eliminated the per-ton tipping fee that municipal trash contractors pay at landfills because the county no longer has a recycling program.The commissioners plan to return the fees to municipalities that were collected from April 2013 through the end of 2014."We don't believe the money should go to us," O'Gurek said. "It's the municipalities' money."The county will now look at the 2013 reports to determine how much each municipality paid and will then distribute it from the Solid Waste fund, which currently has approximately $194,000.O'Gurek said municipalities will receive a second check for the 2014 fee collections at a later time because not all reports are in from haulers, landfills and municipalities.Commissioners' Chairman Wayne Nothstein urged all parties involved to file their reports in a timely manner so the county can calculate the costs for 2014 and return those fees to municipalities."It's our way of giving back to our municipalities," he said.O'Gurek also urged municipalities to contact their trash collectors to open discussions about renegotiating contracts since haulers will no longer be charged the tipping fee, that should be included in current contracts.The tipping fee had previously covered some of the operations of the county's recycling program, which was discontinued in 2013.