The bad news is that, though it has happened before, Otsego County again isn’t producing enough garbage. The good news is that the year isn’t half gone and there might be time to do something about it.

But it’s the long term that county officials need to focus on, because too many elements in the short-term equation are absurd and make people shake their heads in disbelief.

The county is under contract to send 41,611 tons of solid waste to the Montgomery-Otsego-Schoharie Solid Waste Management Authority this year. This quota, called the guaranteed annual tonnage, or GAT, must be met or the county pays for its shortfall at $99 a ton.

The county is on track to miss its GAT by about 1,400 tons, and if that shortfall holds, it would cost the county close to $140,000.

County officials suspect that a decline in construction activity and an increase in recycling could be responsible for the trash gap. It’s the latter explanation that drives people up a wall.

Why should the county and taxpayers be penalized for doing a better job recycling and thereby producing less trash for the waste stream? Shouldn’t there be bonus points here somewhere?

That’s one of the main problems with MOSA, which needs to collect enough garbage from haulers to make ends meet. And that’s why counties are given quotas of trash that their residents must produce.

We know, it sounds as ridiculous today as it did eight years ago, which was the last time the county had to fork over a couple hundred thousand dollars for not having enough trash.

It’s MOSA, the monster created in the late 1980s and joined by Otsego County because, without a landfill, it had to get rid of its garbage somewhere. But with that 25-year pact due to expire in about seven years, time is running to find an alternate solution to the disposal issue.

Most people probably agree that the county should get out of MOSA and therefore should be exploring other options. In fact, the county has a Post-MOSA committee, but it hasn’t been heard from in a while. Most people also realize that finding a place in Otsego County to site a landfill would not be an easy task.

Meanwhile, we thought a GAT solution offered by Andy Mason of Jefferson and a member of the Delaware Otsego Audubon Society remains a viable consideration.

In a letter to the editor, Mason suggests that a ban on the use of burn barrels in the county would put more trash into the stream and help boost the GAT numbers.

Not only that. Such a ban also would make our air cleaner.

We suggest that the county again review such a ban on burn barrels. If enacted, it might save taxpayers $140,000 or more a year in penalties for being too efficient with their recycling.