Feb. 21, 2011

As the landfill’s closing date approaches, Rockbridge County, Lexington, and Buena Vista are cleaning up their final proposals to build transfer stations to ship trash out of the area.

Photo by Alisha Laventure, The Rockbridge Report

Lexington City Manager Jon Ellestad has not yet signed the proposal, but said that when he finishes making the final edits to the document, the city will enter into a partnership with Buena Vista and Rockbridge Resource Recovery Inc. (RRR). RRR will build a transfer station in Buena Vista, a facility that will receive solid waste from the two cities. The trash will be dumped on a concrete floor, pushed into a trailer, and hauled to a large private landfill somewhere in the state. The landfill will be a lined landfill, meaning the soil and groundwater under the waste are protected by two sheets of plastic that collect any drainage from the waste and divert it through pipes out of the landfill.

The only additional environmental cost involved in implementing a transfer station is the amount of fuel it takes to drive each load of trash to the landfill, but the fiscal cost to the city to dispose of its solid waste will increase significantly. Lexington now pays $29 for each ton delivered to the existing landfill.

“I project in 2012, when [the transfer station] goes on line, it will probably be $52 or $53 a ton,” said Ellestad. “It’s a substantial additional cost, but operating our own lined landfill would be a substantial additional cost also.”

Discussions regarding a replacement facility for the existing landfill have been particularly dynamic in the past year, but Rockbridge County has been facing the impending 2012 deadline for the past two decades.

In the late 1990s, Virginia state authorities became concerned with the possibility of waste materials leaching from unlined landfills into the soil and contaminating the groundwater. The existing county landfill was built in the 1970s and is unlined, so when the state began closing landfills, Rockbridge County’s landfill was one of the facilities scheduled to shut down. The county prevailed in its lawsuit against the state, and agreed to close the landfill in 2012 or when the landfill reached capacity, whichever came first.

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The county plans to move forward with its own plans for the transfer station, and the Board of Supervisors reviewed and approved the final proposal with RRR to build a transfer station at the existing landfill. A $750,000 landfill reserve fund will help finance the project, and the county expects to borrow an additional $300,000. 

While moving ahead with plans for the transfer station, the county will continue to study the possibility of building a plasma gasification generator that would burn solid waste and convert it to energy. 

“The technology works, it’s just a question about the business model,” said Rusty Ford of the Rockbridge County Board of Supervisors. “And in fact, we think in a few years the business model can be made to work as well.”

While the company says the plasma gasification generator converts even toxic waste to clean, renewable energy, the community has mixed feelings toward the technology. The most vocal opposition calls the generator an incinerator, and fears the discharged soot, gases and other potentially toxic materials that an incinerator would spew into the atmosphere, polluting the surrounding area. According to Community Energy Independence (CEI), the company that originally brought the idea to the county, the use of this technology will reduce greenhouse gases in addition to generating clean electricity, creating job opportunities for Rockbridge County residents and helping the county work toward its zero-waste goal.