Showing posts tagged “waste transfer station”
Joe Schwartz ·
8 Dec 2009, 5:08 PM ·
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Community members in the Bingham Township and the Rogers Road neighborhood celebrated Monday night as the Orange County Board of Commissioners voted 6-1 last night to send its trash to Durham.
The vote brought to an end a two-year process in which residents of both communities had to stave off pushes to build a waste transfer station in their backyards. Durham’s waste transfer station has enough capacity to include Orange, though a final agreement is yet to be hammered out.
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Durham County, Orange County, environment, politics Durham, Orange County Board of Commissioners, Preserve Rural Orange, Rogers Road, waste transfer station
Joe Schwartz ·
2 Sep 2009, 12:57 PM ·
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Two hours, more than a dozen public comments (it seemed more people spoke than didn’t in the packed meeting) and healthy discussion didn’t bring Orange County Commissioners any closer to selecting a waste transfer station site Tuesday night.
The board voted 4-3 to consider all four remaining sites with the hope of selecting one by Dec. 7. It was the latest twist in a controversial selection process that’s lingered on for more than a year now.
“I’ve almost been rendered speechless by where we are,” Commissioner Mike Nelson said. “I completely understand where the public has lost trust in the process.”
The four options remaining are the Dennis Howell property along N.C. Hwy 54, shipping trash to Durham’s waste transfer station and two sites, one owned by the Town of Chapel Hill and one 10-acre site owned by the county, along Millhouse Road.
Many of the residents who spoke voiced concern of the high cost of siting and maintaining a transfer station, the danger and increased traffic created by large trucks and the smell of garbage. They included Will Raymond, running for Chapel Hill Town Council, a new resident who closed on his home 10 days ago, a 15-year-old student of Emerson Waldorf School, which is nearby the Millhouse Road sites, and residents of the Rogers Road community, among a host of others.
The three dissenting votes came from Chairwoman Valerie Foushee, Alice Gordon and Nelson, who opposed the county-owned Millhouse site because it was not considered in the process outlined by the board. Nelson also made a motion to ask Hillsborough to ship its trash to Durham as the transfer station delay may necessitate keeping open a landfill in Orange County that’s already nearing capacity. It failed 2-5 with Foushee voting in favor.
Orange County, environment, politics Orange County commissioners, waste transfer station
Matt Saldaña ·
22 Apr 2009, 5:38 PM ·
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Despite a plea from Commissioner Mike Nelson to “put the period at the end of the sentence” and move forward with a proposed waste-transfer station in southwestern Orange County, the Board of County Commissioners delayed a final vote on the facility at last night’s regular meeting in Chapel Hill.
Instead, commissioners moved to contract with a legal firm for the project, await a final decision by the State Clearinghouse regarding a number of environmental issues with the proposed property and, if necessary, require that county staff develop an Environmental Impact Statement. The commissioners also voted to:
-Rule out the possibility of siting a temporary transfer station at the Eubanks Road landfill;
-Conduct a work session with members of the Solid Waste Advisory Board and representatives from Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Hillsborough; and
-Consult with local fire departments about the potential risks of having a transfer station on a site with no water/sewer access, or a readily available septic system (the conditions of the county’s preferred site).
The commissioners may have an additional year to make up their minds. Solid Waste Management Director Gayle Wilson announced that a recent study of the Eubanks Road landfill revealed “an additional year of landfill capacity,” due to the University of North Carolina no longer using the landfill, and improvements including a landfill compactor and a ban on curbside cardboard pickup. Originally, the site was scheduled to shut down its municipal solid-waste operation in mid-2011, requiring the county to transfer its waste to another landfill.
Commissioner Pam Hemminger, who told Nelson, “I disagree with you completely,” cautioned against making a quick decision for the sake of expediency.
Citing a project budget “all over the map,” and a staff report (PDF, 800 KB) that recommends several final-minute changes, including a presumably forcible purchase of just 25 acres–instead of the original, 143-acre site offered for sale by its owner– Hemminger said, “We are in charge of taxpayer money. I understand the dilemmas and hardships, but I don’t think we have fully examined this.” Continue reading »
Carrboro, Chapel Hill, Orange County, environment waste transfer station
Matt Saldaña ·
1 Apr 2009, 5:41 PM ·
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In a report delivered to the Orange County Solid Waste Advisory Board (SWAB) Tuesday night, Charlotte-based consultants Olver, Inc. said that building and operating a waste transfer station would be cheaper than paying a private company to haul the county’s trash to a landfill in another county. (The county’s municipal solid waste landfill is set to close in 2011.) As mentioned here previously, Olver is projecting the station will cost $55 million over the course of 20 years–roughly $7 to $9 million less than paying private vendors to haul trash over the same time period. The projected cost for a transfer station includes a $4.8 million budget for land purchase, planning and construction– a lower figure than originally mentioned. Olver, which specializes in developing waste facilities, spread these costs out over 20 years, and then compared overall annual figures to private-vendor options.
The results–which showed lower costs for a transfer station, compared to private-vendor options, for each of the next 20 years (with the exception of one year in which hauling waste to Durham’s municipal transfer station would be cheaper)–were puzzling to Orange County Commissioner Steve Yuhasz, who sat in on the meeting. (View the summary, and background materials.)
“I’m not sure that graph answers my question,” he said to Olver representative James Reynolds, referring to the Board of County Commissioners’ original request to analyze a “parallel track” of, among other options, temporarily using private vendors. “That’s factoring in, I think, the cost of building the transfer station. What I’m saying is, if we don’t build the transfer station—it seems to me that those two lines cross further out.”
One reason the transfer-station costs remained relatively low was Olver’s estimate for the price of building the facility–a source of speculation for months. Olver achieved the figure of $4.8 million, in part, by recommending the county purchase just 25 acres, at $15,000 an acre, for a total of $375,000 in land purchase costs. However, that estimate is at odds with the proposed sites’ property owners. In a letter to the county, Dennis Howell insisted on selling all 143 acres of one site, for no less than $3 million. The Orange Water and Sewer Authority (OWASA), which owns the second site, has made clear it does not wish to sell.
Bonnie Hauser, a member of Orange County Voice, an advocacy group opposed to the proposed sites, challenged Reynolds on his cost estimates: “So if we wrote a check for a $5 million fixed price, we would be good?” she said.
“Would I guarantee it? No,” Reynolds said.
Other numbers raised eyebrows, including the distance Olver calculated from the transfer-station sites to the average Chapel Hill collection point (8 miles), shorter than its projected distance to Carrboro (8.7 miles). In fact, the proposed sites, which are along N.C. Hwy 54 in southwestern Orange County, are 8 miles west of Carrboro, and 11 miles west of Chapel Hill (see map below):
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Orange County, environment waste transfer station
Matt Saldaña ·
31 Mar 2009, 3:46 PM ·
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The Charlotte-based consultants overseeing a 16-month long site-selection process for a waste-transfer station in Orange County (see the March 11 Indy cover story, “Trash Talk”) have estimated that building and operating a station at one of two sites along N.C. Highway 54 will cost Orange County taxpayers roughly $55 million, over 20 years. Olver, Inc. will deliver the report (available here, along with supporting materials here) to the Orange County Solid Waste Advisory Board (SWAB) tonight at 7 p.m., at the Solid Waste Management office at 1207 Eubanks Road in Chapel Hill.
The report compares the estimated cost of an Orange County waste transfer station to that of two other alternatives: direct haul to transfer stations operated by private haulers in RTP, and direct haul to a transfer station in Durham. According to Olver, paying private contractors to haul trash to Durham would cost the county $64.6 million over 20 years, while paying contractors to haul to RTP would cost $62.2 million–more than the cost of building, and operating, a transfer station in Orange County combined. No other scenarios (such as regional partnerships, or alternative transfer-station sites) are considered in the report.
“The hauling costs will be significantly more, and outweigh the cost of development,” Orange County Solid Waste Management director Gayle Wilson said in an interview. “You’re spending more money [on private contractors], but you’re spending it on gas, rather than on concrete and asphalt.”
Olver wrote that it also estimated “certain operational risks associated with different alternatives,” and other intangible impacts, including “loss of economic benefits from having local employees” and “less influence on the disposal site operations to ensure environmental protection and community health and safety.” It is unclear whether these “costs” figured into Olver’s financial analysis.
By contrast, Orange County Voice, an advocacy group that has organized opposition to the proposed transfer-station sites in Bingham Township, estimates that a county-run facility would cost as much as $108 million to build and run over the next 20 years. The group’s conservative estimate for private-hauler costs is $72 million. (View the O.C. Voice report, and accompanying press releases, here.)
We’ll be at the SWAB meeting tonight, and will attempt to determine how Olver arrived at its figure, how much it estimates for construction costs, and whether it included intangible factors in its financial analysis.
Orange County, environment waste transfer station
Vernal Coleman ·
22 Oct 2008, 11:45 AM ·
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The Orange County Board of Commissioners narrowed the list of potential sites for the new county waste transfer station to three Tuesday night, reports the News and Observer.
Notably absent from the list of remaining sites is the location in the Rogers-Eubanks community, the current home of the now 36-year-old county landfill.
The Board of commissioners is set to make their final decision on a site for the new facility Nov. 18.
A map of the three sites can be found below:
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North Carolina, Orange County, media, news, politics Orange County, Orange County Board of Commissioners, waste transfer station
Vernal Coleman ·
13 Oct 2008, 12:38 PM ·
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Members of the Rogers Road community aren’t the only Orange County residents up in arms over the list of sites for the proposed county waste transfer station. The Herald-Sun reports that the Hillsborough Waste Transfer Station Advisory Committee will tonight present to the Town Board a list of recommendations to take to the County Board of Commissioners upcoming work session, recommendations that include asking the commissioners to slow down the selection process and consider additional sites.
Mayor Pro-Tem Mike Gering tells the paper that most residents did not learn that two of the proposed sites were near Hillsborough until just before a public hearing last month, adding:
This [transfer station] process has gone way too fast. We’d like to see a thorough analysis done of these sites, and we just don’t see any way that this can be done.
The Orange County Board of Commissioners will revisit the waste transfer station Oct. 21. A map of the proposed sites can be found here.
Orange County Hillsborough, Orange County, waste transfer station
Vernal Coleman ·
17 Sep 2008, 5:45 PM ·
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With their meeting room at the Southern Human Services Center overflowing with onlookers, the Orange County Board of Commissioners inched closer to finalizing a list of possible sites for a proposed solid waste transfer station.
Consultants for the project presented county leaders with a report detailing their findings and a ranked list of ten possible locations before proposing that it be further whittled down to the top six. (A map of the prospective sites can be found below.)
But the commissioners balked at the prospect of moving forward before the “community based criteria” could be applied to the list, a move that board chairman, Barry Jacobs, all but guaranteed would give the environmental justice advocates and Rogers Road community residents in attendance a result with which they “would be pleased.”
The board caused an uproar last fall after deciding that the historically black neighborhood, and current home of the county’s now thirty-five-year-old and rapidly filling landfill, would remain the drop off point for the 60,000 tons of waste generated by Orange County residents each year.
Commissioners later reopened the selection process amidst protests by the the community’s residents, many of whom attended Tuesday’s meeting to demand that the Eubanks Road site be dropped from consideration.
Said Rev. Robert Cambell, head of the Coalition to End Environmental Racism, “To place the waste transfer station on Eubanks means, once again, no environmental justice for this community.”
Other speakers were surprised to find that the two sites ranked highest on the list were in Hillsborough, and expressed worry that that their own town would become home to the new station.
“I’d hate to tell people, ‘Who needs Google, all you need to do to find Hillsborough is follow the garbage trucks,’” lamented Jo Soulier.
The board is scheduled to take up the issue again in October.
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Carrboro, Chapel Hill, Orange County, news, politics environmental justice, Eubanks Road, Orange County Board of Commissioners, waste transfer station
