A new plan for county's trash
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The county landfill will close in 2012 because of state environmental regulations. (QUEENIE WONG/ The Rockbridge Report) |
By Jess Ramos, Jessica Shaw and Queenie Wong
For more than three decades, trash in the Rockbridge area has been buried in the county’s landfill near Buena Vista.
All of that will change when the landfill shut its gates in 2012. It is closing because it no longer meets environmental standards.
“We are an unlined landfill,” Landfill Director Tom Higgins said. “The state ranked all of the unlined landfills in their propensity to pollute or the risk to the environment and assigned closure dates. We’re still one of the last unlined landfills that are operating.”
The deadline leaves the county's Board of Supervisors with the job of figuring out what to do with the 50,000 tons of trash the county throws away each year. Opening a new landfill is out of the question, they say, because it would cost millions of dollars and take years to prepare.
But the alternative they appear ready to adopt has raised some troubling issues. Among them:
• The proposal is being negotiated in secret.
• It depends on a consortium that has never worked together before. Some do not have experience in trash disposal.
• For the first time, county residents could pay directly for trash they deliver to collection centers.
• Lexington residents could pay an additional $135 to $150 more than the $325 per year they pay now for trash pickup. Buena Vista residents could pay double the $156 per year they pay now.
• It will force county residents to take their trash to one of the eight to 10 collection centers rather than the current 50 dumpster sites. That could result in longer drives and potentially increase the temptation to dump illegally.
Faced with the expense of opening a new landfill, the supervisors decided to privatize the operation and sought proposals from companies interested in solid waste disposal. Five responded.
At the beginning of May, supervisors entered secret negotiations with a group of companies that they decided presented the most promising plan.
The chosen group, called Rockbridge Resource Recovery (RRR), is a business venture between Auto Recyclers, Hamilton Contracting of Buena Vista and C&S Disposal of Natural Bridge. RRR recommended building a local facility where trash would be compacted and then driving it to a landfill more than 100 miles away.
It’s a process that nobody involved has much experience with. Supervisor Rusty Ford says the county has had one pre-negotiating session to familiarize RRR with the process.
“We chose RRR because they’re already in the business [of solid waste],” Ford said. “Further, they had a site chosen that was already zoned industrial and was within five miles of our target area.”
All three branches of RRR are involved in waste disposal or recycling. Auto Recyclers offers a curbside pickup service for recyclables for residents in Lexington and Buena Vista. Hamilton Contracting runs a septic service. C&S Disposal operates a garbage pickup service, provides portable toilets and cleans septic tanks. RRR’s proposed site is within a five-mile radius of the intersection of Interstate 81 and Route 60, the county's target area.
RRR proposed that the county build a 25,000 square-foot solid waste transfer station at an industrial park in Buena Vista. There, garbage from Rockbridge County, Lexington and Buena Vista will be taken, compacted and driven to a landfill in Amelia County, according to the group’s original proposal.
While RRR’s proposal calls for the transfer station to be built in the Green Forest Industrial Park on the eastern edge of Buena Vista, supervisors say they might still order it built at the current landfill.
The transfer station would also house a materials recovery facility where employees would pick out recyclables from trash spread onto a 200-foot long conveyor belt.
Supervisors said that RRR is looking into hiring workers from Buena Vista's Rockbridge Area Occupational Center, which employs people with disabilities.
But safety is also a concern because there are health risks involved such as contracting hepatitis and tetanus from sorting through trash.
“It’s not a job I’d want,” Ford said. “Not something anybody would look forward to doing on a regular basis, and that’s a concern for all of us.”
Ford said he’s confident, however, that the employees would be trained properly. He has toured the Auto Recyclers plant where sorting of recyclables takes place, and he said the company's founder, Paul Palma, knows what he’s doing.
“I don’t think Mr. Palma would hire anyone who didn’t understand the risk,” he said. “I’ve watched the people who he has working for him .... He trains his people pretty carefully.”
Palma and Auto Recyclers have refused to talk about anything regarding the RRR proposal after more than a dozen phone calls from The Rockbridge Report, citing the secret negotiations. The other two branches of RRR, Hamilton Contracting and C&S Disposal, referred all questions to Palma.