County conversion to transfer station right on schedule

By Hannah W. Wever

Published: May 15, 2008

The county’s 27-acre landfill will have to close by 2012, according to state regulations, and the county has to have an alternative waste management system up and running before then. After reviewing the options presented after a study conducted by the Orange County Planning Commission as well as an independent contractor, the board of supervisors concluded a transfer station was chosen for the county’s future waste disposal rather than a more expensive replacement landfill.
In 2006, a county-hired consultant estimated that in 2013 a new landfill would cost taxpayers about $75 per ton of trash; a transfer station would cost approximately $67 per ton. A transfer station would reduce the need for expensive landfill equipment, as well as other construction and operational costs inherent to building a landfill.
Now, county officials are refining arrangements for a transfer station to replace the current landfill. Instead of all municipal waste accumulating in one location at a designated dumpsite, the county’s trash will be taken to a transfer station, and then hauled away on trucks to another private landfill in another locality.
“The landfill’s got to be closed by December 31, 2012; we’ve got to a schedule set up of when we need to make that transition,” Orange County Administrator Bill Rolfe said. “We’re right on target so far with everything that we’re doing.”
County officials have already vetted a number of privately owned trash trucking businesses, “just to touch base with them and see what the state of the private sector is,” Rolfe added.
The transfer station will be located where the landfill is now, near the animal shelter and the sheriff’s office, but the county hasn’t determined where its trash will go, Rolfe and Orange County Director of Public Works Hildebrand said. The number of potential destinations is small.
“There are only a couple of landfills that our trash might end up going to,” Rolfe said.
The candidates for Orange County’s trash, Hildebrand said are large-capacity facilities which can collect municipal trash for decades to come. Currently, facilities exist in King George and Amelia counties. A brand new collection site is slated to open in Cumberland County, he added.
Still up in the air, as well, are the particulars regarding which agencies—municipal or private--will run the facility, and who will oversee the transport of the trash to a dumpsite somewhere else.
“We could build a transfer station and contract with someone to operate it and to haul it away,” Rolfe said. A slight variation, he said, would be for the county to operate the transfer station, and privatize trash hauling services.
Either way, Rolfe said, county trash facilities and services need to be planned carefully.
“We need to proceed cautiously and make sure we know where we’re going,” he said.
Planning for the transfer station began back in 2006, and inflation has brought the cost of doing business up significantly. However, Rolfe said the price to build the facility will likely be quite close to the original estimate county officials received six years ago, approximately $2.1 million.
“We don’t think it’s going to cost any more than the original estimate,” Rolfe said.
But without a doubt, the costs for trucking trash from a transfer station to an outsourced dumpsite will be considerably higher; a result of the almost exponential inflation of fuel prices.
It is unlikely, Rolfe added, that Orange County will be out kicking tires at truck dealerships. Plans are to outsource hauling to private companies who specialize in transporting trash.
“We’re just trying to get a gage on what’s out there,” Rolfe said. “Hauling costs have gone up considerably because of the price of diesel fuel,” he said. Rolfe said he and his staff are considering options to maximize the quantity of trash that will fit on each truck—minimizing the number of trips (and the cost) each truck makes to the out-of-county land fill.
Rolfe and Hildebrand said there is even an opportunity for the county to generate a little revenue while disposing of discarded cardboard.
“The way you make money is to put cardboard on tractor trailers and sell it,” Rolfe said. And just as there’s a fee for hauling trash away, there are companies who will pay for the garbage that’s hauled to them, Rolfe said.
One way to maximize each truck’s cross-county journey to the dump, Hildebrand suggested, would be for county citizens to get serious about recycling.
Currently, most folks who take their trash to the county’s convenience centers aren’t doing much sorting before hurling their household refuse into the boxes, he said. But if garbage is separated before it leaves those convenience centers, there is less cost to have the items separated afterwards—the work has already been done.
“It starts at home,” Rolfe said. “That’s the problem—it’s inconvenient to do at home.”
A few extra seconds at home, to keep cans with cans, and cardboard with cardboard, will add up to savings later on. And, Hildebrand added, “Environmentally, we’d be doing the right thing.”
But when it comes to keeping household trash organized and separated, altering county residents’ current habits may be hard to do, Rolfe said.
“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” he said. “It’s about how committed you are to improving the environment on this Planet Earth.”

In an effort to allow around-the-clock trash disposal, the Orange County Board of Supervisors experimented with a pilot program for an unstaffed trash convenience center. The solid waste collection site was designed to remain unlocked and allowed after-hours access—even after the landfill closed for the day--for residents to dispose of their household refuse.
But Orange County Department of Public Works Director Kurt Hildebrand said the test scenario was a failure.
“It’s been abused on a fairly regular basis,” Hildebrand said. The box was intended for use as a collection site for household trash, but people have chucked “inappropriate objects” in the container, like bicycles and lawnmowers.
Hildebrand said he will let the board of supervisors know that the unmanned, unsupervised collection site has been misused. Board members’ suggestions to operate all of the county’s convenience as self-serve operations is likely, in retrospect, not a good idea.
In addition to becoming a dump site for county residents’ household garbage (not to mention the inappropriate objects), without an employee onsite to oversee what and who is coming into the convenience center, the collection sites could be used by out-of-county individuals too, Hildebrand said.
In Barboursville, where the convenience center is located close to the borders of Albemarle and Greene counties, that’s already happening, Orange County Administrator Bill Rolfe said.
“You don’t want to be paying for disposing other people’s trash from outside the county. It’s bad enough to be paying for our own,” Rolfe said.