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lO <br />Memorandum <br />To: Laura Blackmon, County Manager <br />From: Gayle Wilson, Solid Waste Director <br />Subject: Transfer Station Site Search <br />Date: November 28, 2008 <br />While the technical consultant is preparing a comprehensive response to the Board of <br />Commissioners' inquiries and requests, I thought it might be useful to prepare some <br />comments from a staff perspective. <br />Background <br />Since a search for a landfill site in the mid 1990s was not successful, staff has <br />consistently brought forth the concept that a transfer station would be required to manage <br />solid waste. Even Orange County's remarkable success in reducing waste has not altered <br />that reality. <br />In 2001 staff proposed, as part of a Eubanks Road property master plan that the Board of <br />County Commissioners (BOCC) was considering, that the plan indicate a transfer station <br />be located on this property. The BOCC adopted the master plan, absent confirmation that <br />the transfer station would be located there. The BOCC was not ready to commit at that <br />time and wanted to keep its options open. <br />In late 2005, the BOCC requested that the Solid Waste Advisory Board (SWAB) consider <br />how to proceed with resolving the transfer station matter. The result was a SWAB <br />memorandum in March 2006 confirming that the Eubanks Road site could adequately <br />handle the transfer station. Subsequent discussions with the BOCC resulted in a request <br />for the SWAB to evaluate delivering waste to the Durham Transfer Station rather than <br />local development of a Transfer Station. In August 2006 the SWAB's assessment <br />concluded that the Durham option was not prudent and recommended to the BOCC <br />proceeding expeditiously to develop an in-County facility. In March 2007, the BOCC <br />directed staff to begin planning for a Transfer Station on Eubanks Road (and . <br />simultaneously created the Historic Rogers Road Neighborhood Task Force to continue <br />discussions of a neighborhood enhancement program). At the November 15, 2007 <br />meeting the BOCC decided to initiate a new process for identifying and evaluating <br />alternate locations for the Transfer Station. <br />Subsequent to this November 2007 decision to develop a new transfer siting process, the <br />BOCC obtained the services of an experienced technical consultant to assist in the site <br />search endeavor, developed a new systematic site search process and timeline, created <br />levels of search criteria, created ranking and weighting factors for the criteria, and <br />