KINGSTON — Kitsap County pulled its compacting trash cans from downtown Kingston along Highway 104 this week.

Providing a convenient way for visitors to the heavily trafficked downtown area to dispose of their trash is now up to local merchants.

The county and the Greater Kingston Area Chamber of Commerce had a contract in which the county provided the solar-powered compacting trash cans, known as BigBellys, and the chamber emptied and maintained them. They proved to be a nice amenity in a tourism-oriented downtown located next to a ferry landing.

But the chamber asked to end the contract, saying it was hard to find volunteers to do the work. The county removed the BigBellys on Sept. 16. Each Big Belly will go to the county fairgrounds, Commissioner Rob Gelder said.

Gelder said there were six to eight BigBellys on Highway 104 from Washington Boulevard to the library and community center.

Gelder said the county has BigBellys — purchased with stimulus funds in 2009 — at county parks, such as Point No Point.

The problem with the Highway 104 BigBellys: They’re not on county property, so the county is not obligated to maintain them. “We don’t do solid waste management for businesses,” Gelder said.

The BigBellys were placed on state right-of-way, in an area impacted by the state ferries. But the state Department of Transportation is not in the waste management business, either.

So, the chamber of commerce recruited volunteers to empty the BigBellys of compacted trash and dump it into a nearby dumpster. But over time, volunteers were harder to find.

“We did take responsibility for the cans when they were installed, but they have had some issues with breaking down and the bags are very expensive,” said Mike Haley, chamber of commerce president.

“We’ve gone through a lot of volunteers trying to maintain the cans, but it is a lot of work and finding volunteers has been an issue. We had no choice but to discontinue the contract with the county. We would love to keep it going, but we have run into a lot of problems with reliability and volunteers.”

Colleen Carey, executive director of the chamber, added, “It was a very hard decision for us to dissolve this program and we appreciate everything the county has done.”

Carey said the cans need to be emptied three times a week. “Gene’s Down to Earth Landscaping was helping for the last year and this program would have been over a long time ago if it wasn’t for Gene Smith,” she said.

Some downtown workers worry about how the absence of the BigBellys will impact the streetscape.

An employee of Drifter’s said the cans were always full and “looked terrible.”

An employee of the Kingston Quilt Shop worries that a lack of trash cans will lead to trash in the street. Providing trash cans “seems like a public service that should be provided,” the employee said.

Gelder hopes a community conversation will ensue about what can be done to take care of downtown Kingston’s trash. A solution “will take downtown business owners coming together and making it happen,” he said.

Businesses in Silverdale contract for waste management, Gelder said. In downtown Kingston’s case, he said a solution might be for each business to provide a place for their customers to dispose of their trash, with that refuse emptied into a central dumpster that would then be hauled away by a waste management company.

Kingston Port Commissioner Walt Elliott’s gave his take on the issue.

“Originally we had regular trash cans in downtown and they were emptied by Kitsap County. We had a crisis one year when trash pick-up stopped and litter proliferated,” he wrote in an email.

“With stimulus funding, the county replaced these with solar-powered BigBelly compacting trash cans. The BigBelly would reduce times to pick up and save labor costs, especially when the units were spread out over a large area.  There [are] BigBellys spread around the county, and maybe 13 of these units in the parks at Hansville.

“There were some problems initially with getting the right compaction, as too much resulted in too heavy a bag. After a year or so, the county stated they would no longer empty the BigBellys in Kingston.”

Elliott wrote that the Kingston Citizens Advisory Committee asked the county to remove the BigBelly at Arness Park and replace it with a regular trash can, which was easier for a volunteer to empty.

He wrote that the port district funded an additional Dumpster to accommodate refuse from the BigBellys.

— With reporting by Luke Wesson