Orange County NC Website
plan on behalf of all three municipalities (excluding Mebane at this time) and the County due to <br /> the County's role owning the landfill and managing the recycling and waste reduction <br /> programs, and the Make Reports section of the Interlocal Agreement. The last plan submittal, <br /> for 2006, was essentially a descriptive placeholder type document, with solid waste planning <br /> activity continuing until the present through the efforts of the Solid Waste Plan Work Group. <br /> The Solid Waste Plan Work Group is made up of elected officials, staff and citizen <br /> members of the Solid Waste Advisory Board (SWAB) from all jurisdictions, and was instituted <br /> in 2005 to create a more cohesive planning process whose intention is to bring to the <br /> governing boards concepts and recommendations on a range of county-wide waste <br /> management issues. <br /> Gayle Wilson said that staff believes that the time has come to proceed toward <br /> completion of the latest version of the 3-year update of the 10-year plan by the Work Group, <br /> not only to meet the state's three year plan update objective, but also to provide guidance to <br /> County citizens and governments with regard to future direction of recycling and waste <br /> management in Orange County. While the planning is not yet complete, at some point a <br /> document must be completed and submitted, even if all issues are not fully developed. <br /> Additionally, he said the Board of Commissioners are looking for guidance with regard to <br /> current rural waste and recycling services, specifically the future role of solid waste <br /> convenience centers and a more sustainable funding source for the rural services provided <br /> through the convenience centers, which has been the subject of most recent Work Group <br /> deliberations. He said that staff is concerned with the ongoing and continuing nature of the <br /> Solid Waste planning efforts and the resulting delay and seeks to develop a 3-Year Plan <br /> Update and submit to the State at the earliest opportunity, addressing the remaining <br /> unresolved issues in the next 3-Year Update due in June 2012. <br /> It has been suggested to give all jurisdictions an update at the March Assembly of <br /> Governments Meeting. He said that the work group has supported strongly the 61% waste <br /> reduction goal, and they have recently been informed that the County's FY 2008-09 waste <br /> reduction is 54%. <br /> He said that the Work Group adopted some goals — page 6 — Solid Waste Planning <br /> Goals for Evaluation of Rural Waste Management Issues: The prioritization of goals to guide <br /> decision making with regard to unincorporated area waste issues was completed by the Work <br /> Group. The ranking has meeting the 61% diversion goal as receiving the strongest support <br /> resulting in a weighting of 28.9%. Safety is second at 18.7%; cost-effective operations third at <br /> 18.6%; sustainable funding system fourth at 15.2%; reduced environmental impact fifth at <br /> 12.6%; and cost equity last at 5.9%. Based on those priorities, an overarching principle for <br /> design and operation of the centers needs to support recycling and waste reduction while <br /> enabling users to minimize what is actually discarded. <br /> Neighborhood/District Network Option Solid Waste Convenience Centers (SWCC) <br /> He said that the Solid Waste Planning Work Group (Work Group) had been discussing Solid <br /> Waste Convenience Centers (SWCC) and other rural waste management issues due in part to <br /> the recent public interest in budget related service reduction recommendations. He said this <br /> update does not attempt to comprehensively describe the various alternatives and issues <br /> considered or discussed as this is a work in progress for the Work Group but only highlight a <br /> small portion of the Work Group's effort on the subject. This update will focus on summarizing <br /> the center upgrade options considered and the SWCC service scenario that scored/ranked <br /> highest on the Work Group's adopted program goals and weighting factors - the <br /> Neighborhood/District option for the future of SWCCs in Orange County. This was first <br /> introduced by Commissioner Jacobs and was one of five SWCC development scenarios <br />