Orange County NC Website
ORANGE COUNTY <br />BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS <br />ACTION AGENDA ITEM ABSTRACT <br />Meeting Date: April 1, 2008 <br />Action Agend-~a <br />Item No. <br />SUBJECT: Landfill Compactor for Orange County Landfill <br />DEPARTMENT: Purchasing/Solid Waste <br />Management <br />PUBLIC HEARING: (Y/N) No <br />ATTACHMENT(S): <br />Equipment Proposal <br />Reimbursement Resolution <br />INFORMATION CONTACT: <br />Pam Jones, 245-2652 <br />Gayle Wilson, 968-2885 <br />PURPOSE: To consider purchase of a Landfill Compactor for the Orange County Landfill in <br />order to obtain additional compaction and extend the life of the landfill. <br />BACKGROUND: Landfill compactors are used to place and compact garbage delivered to the <br />Orange County Landfill. Currently, the Solid Waste Management Department has two of these <br />machines, one located in the Municipal Solid Waste. (MSW) landfill and one in the Construction <br />and Demolition (C&D) landfill. Each of the two current machines weighs 75,000 pounds. The <br />proposed machine weighs 110,000 pounds. <br />The current MSW landfill is expected to reach capacity in mid 2011. At that time, all County <br />generated MSW will be transferred out of the County through a transfer station. The Board of <br />County Commissioners is currently involved in a process of selecting a transfer station site. The <br />current time frame for completion of such a facility, based on the adopted transfer station siting <br />process, is late 2011, but delays in identifying acquiring, permitting or constructing a new site <br />could create an even larger gap in landfill capacity and availability of the new transfer station. <br />Additionally, as discussed in a March 27, 2008 Manager's Memorandum, a change in state <br />enforcement of Construction & Demolition wastes will cause the mid-2011 to be modified to early <br />2011. <br />Staff has considered several different options that could provide the necessary extra capacity or <br />to alternatively manage waste for an interim period. These alternatives include expanding <br />material bans, implementation of new or expanded recycling programs, and contingency and <br />temporary transferring of waste using dump and reload operations. These options are unable to <br />provide substantive time extensions. However, another option which could provide Orange <br />County considerable additional time is to increase the waste compaction rate within the landfill, <br />essentially squeezing more waste into a given space. This can be accomplished by increasing <br />the weight of the compactor. Staff's internal calculations indicate that the County could achieve <br />several months of additional capacity and the County's engineering consultant has verified these <br />