Agenda - 09-16-2010 - 2 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Draft The County Solid Waste Department regularly receives lists of development applications for all non-single family building projects so they can ensure a solid waste plan is filed, inspect job sites and provide education and enforcement of the aspects of the RRMO. Solid waste staff from Carrboro, Chapel Hill and UNC continues to inspect dumpsters and rolloff containers under their respective jurisdictions' control for the presence of regulated materials and routinely tag such containers to prevent their collection until such materials are removed. Tagging reduces the landfill tip fee penalties the Towns or the University may incur and, for C&D waste, ensures accountability for where waste is delivered. Solid Waste Convenience Center staff educate,urge and direct the public to separate regulated materials at the Convenience Center sites, as the trucks delivering waste from the sites to the landfill are treated similarly to any other non-residential truck and routinely penalized for presence of regulated materials in their loads. LTNC employs its own staff to educate contractors, building operators, students and faculty and monitor those containers under its jurisdiction to keep them free of regulated materials or they too incur penalties or sanctions invoked by UNC staff. In general,the various Towns also support the County-wide recycling program by passing ordinances correlated to the County ordinances, for example the County ban on landfilling residential cardboard was coordinated with collection bans in all three jurisdictions. The Towns of Carrboro and Hillsborough distribute recycling bins from their offices.All three Towns notify the County of new residences slated to receive collection and provide recycling information to new residents as they move in along with the jurisdiction's own solid waste information. Each Town's web site also has a link to the recycling and solid waste management web page. Consideration of Alternative Technolo�ies In 2008,the Solid Waste Advisory Board commissioned a study of alternative technologies by consultant Gershman,Brickner and Bratton(GBB)that identified incineration of waste with energy recovery as the most effective near-term solution. Total cost for building a waste combustion plant was calculated at about$100 per ton,approximately twice the cost of current landfill disposal at the relatively small scale that Orange County operates of about 50,000 tons a year of MSW. GBB also concluded that only mass combustion of waste-to-energy was mature enough as a technology to handle the great majority of the County's waste using a single technology though analysis did review other technologies including plasma arc, large scale anaerobic digestion and refuse-derived-fuel. Following the December 2009 decision not to site a transfer station in Orange County for at least three to five years,various citizens and citizen groups have urged the County to consider other alternative technologies for handling the county's solid waste and possibly other wastes such as biosolids,medical waste and other difficult to manage materials. As part of the motion the Board adopted in December, 2009,the Board requested that the SWAB undertake a more complete review of alternative technologies during 2010-11. In April 2010 the SWAB hosted its first presentation of the plasma arc technology by inventor Dr.Louis Circeo of Georgia lnstitute of Technology. Future technology reviews and presentations are also planned with a report by the SWAB back to the board following completion of more comprehensive review. Alternative technologies may come to play a role in managing waste and recycling options will doubtless increase,but most likely there will always be some residual to manage as well as a 41 `