Agenda - 12-06-2010 - 7c - Laserfiche WebLink

Browse Search

1,298 tons from the schools and County government buildings. An estimated 5,000 residences or 25%of unincorporated area households subscribe to a variety of private waste collection services that generally haul waste out of County. A few very sma111oca1 haulers use the Orange County landfill. Private customers account for an estimated 5,000 tons of MSW; an estimated 500 tons of which was estimated as delivered to the Orange County landfill. The very small haulers are predominantly cash customers,therefore harder to track precisely. Convenience Center operations have been stable and no major improvements have been made for two years. Site use declined less than 2%in 2009-10 when hours were cut over 30%. There is increasing demand and markets for additional recyclables but the ability to expand is constrained by lack of sufficient space at convenience centers and dropoff sites and management capacity. Funds are not now available to re-expand hours or to capitalize convenience center improvements that have been identified and analyzed as both being cost-effective and provided safer,more efficient service. The Work Group has recommended future funding options, site improvements, locations and operational concepts to the Board of Orange County Commissioners. Those recommendation will be presented in November. The Solid Waste Plan Work Group and SWAB have discussed and considered franchised solid waste collection in the unincorporated areas and various concepts and options for expanding niral curbside recycling and will continue those discussions along with their recommendation of how to improve the solid waste convenience centers. No Transfer Station The BOCC adopted a motion in December 2009 not to construct a transfer sta.tion in Orange County for at least the next several years. (See Appendix A) The implications of that decision for each of the four local governments in the County's interlocal solid waste agreement have not yet been fully determined, at least for this interim period of three to five years. Some inter- governmental discussions have taken place,but the governments have not finalized any collective decisions on the future destinations of waste once the landfill closes. Orange County will take the waste under its direct control to the City of Durham Transfer Station once the landfill closes. Managing MSW after landfill closure will be challenging, expensive and environmentally difficult and will become more so as the number and placement of landfills diminished over time. Consideration of Alternative Technolo ies The SWAB, at direction of the Board of County Commissioners has reviewed various alternatives to landfilling over the past two years. In addition there has been strong citizen interest in alternative methods of waste management. In 2008,the County contracted with consulting firm, GBB to conduct a review of alternative technologies which concluded that only mass combustion waste to energy was mature enough as a technology to handle the great majority of the County's waste using a single technology and the net cost of implementing a mass burn incinerator with energy recovery would be about$102 per ton in current dollars. The analysis did review other technologies including plasma arc, large-scale anaerobic digestion and 9