Although plans are underway to build a solid waste transfer station, there appears to be no rush to have it operational anytime soon now that the county’s consulting engineer has determined that the existing Class I landfill still has a remaining life of more than two years.
In a report to the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation’s Division of Solid Waste Management dated January 27, 2015, Ronnie Reece of Professional Engineering Services of Sparta wrote that the remaining life of the Class 1 Landfill for the DeKalb County Felts Cell “D”/Vickers Tract Phase 1 is two years and three months. The landfill is estimated to be filled to capacity during the month of March 2017.
County Mayor Tim Stribling made the county commissioners aware of the report during last Thursday night’s All-Committees workshop and again during Monday night’s regular monthly meeting. He also made available to the commissioners copies of Reece’s report to TDEC.
“The landfill life calculations are based on projected amounts of waste received and an estimated compaction rate. If any of these projected quantities change during the continued operation of the Class 1 Landfill facility, so will the life of the landfill,” according to Reece’s report.
Last August, the county commission voted to enter into a five year contract with Smith County to dispose of DeKalb County’s solid waste at the rate of $29.00 a ton after the transfer station becomes operational. During Monday night’s meeting, County Mayor Stribling said the engineer is recommending that the county use more of the existing landfill site still available before paying another county to take its solid waste. “Our engineer suggested to use some of this landfill that we still have instead of paying to have it hauled and put in somebody else’s landfill. It’s not like that we’ve got to have a transfer station up and going in a month or two. We’ve got some time to gradually cross over,” he said.
Meanwhile, work will continue toward completing the transfer station so that it will be ready when needed. ” The transfer station work should be done probably the first of March. That’s as far as the buildings are concerned. We’ve still got some utilities to be put in. The water and gas have to be installed. Probably sometime during the latter part of this year we’ll try to get the transfer station up and going but we still have some equipment that will have to be bought. We’ve still got to have a loader and things like that for the transfer station. We’ve still got to have some utilities installed in order to get the buildings up and going,” said County Mayor Stribling.
The commission last August awarded a bid to Elk Mountain Construction of Cookeville to build the transfer station, which is located in the Smithville Industrial Park on Highway 70 east behind Tenneco Automotive. Elk Mountain’s base bid was $1,308,092 with a deductive alternate of $425,077 from the base bid for road work into the proposed facility.
After the transfer station is in operation the county will close its existing Class I landfill but develop a Class III/IV site on the same property for the disposal of construction material, household furniture, and other non-household garbage.
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