Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
The new Whitman County Solid Waste Transfer Station is nearing completion, with a ribbon cutting ceremony tentatively set for March 25.
“We’re pretty well on schedule,” said David Nails, the county’s Solid Waste and Recycling Director. “It’s been a decent winter to get it all done.”
The last step will be to pave the approaches which Motley & Motley of Pullman is scheduled to do in the first week of April.
As the project nears its finish, March 9 is what is termed the “substantial completion date.”
“That means that everything needs to be functioning,” Nails said.
On March 10, engineers from CH2Mhill in Boise were scheduled for a walk-through, after which the contractor, Halme Builders of Davenport, will be given a punch list of items with four weeks to complete them.
“So that’s second week of April, that’s kind of what I’m shooting for,” Nails said.
The transfer station will hold its annual “Spring Cleanup” April 17-25 with its reduced price on taking garbage (from $102 per ton to $35).
“I want to make sure it’s open for that,” Nails said.
The $4 million transfer station project will replace the existing transfer station, which was installed in the early 1990s.
The new gravity-style drop-in system will more than double the capacity for residents and commercial operations to drop off municipal solid waste.
The old facility, which featured an elevation belt system for loading, will be converted to a recycling center.
The new 12,000-square foot operation will have eight stalls for trucks to back up to, compared to the three on the old one.
The previous stalls handled commercial trucks – most from Empire Disposal and Pullman Disposal – as well as residential.
The new eight bays, however, will be split into four for residential and four for commercial.
“It’s going to be a great improvement for the citizens of Whitman County,” Nails said.
A scale on the east side of the new building will serve trucks from Empire Disposal and Pullman Disposal.
The county-funded project came about after a 2012 contract resulted in new savings in the handling of solid waste.
In July of that year, Whitman County re-bid its existing contract with Waste Management. The resulting new arrangement with Allied Waste reduced the transportation and disposal fee by $10 to $15 per ton.
Before, materials from the county would be taken from the local transfer station by truck to a landfill in Arlington, Ore. Now, with Allied Waste, the materials are driven to Spokane, and put on rail to a landfill in Roosevelt, Wash., along the Columbia River.
For the previous contract, Nails said four to six trucks would haul the 240 miles to Arlington and back while now just two make the trips to Spokane.
An estimated $30,000 per month is being saved on the 10-year contract.
Besides the savings in transportation cost, Nails indicated that the new transfer station will allow for an increase in recycling, by its larger capacity and ability to more efficiently segregate materials.
Another savings will come from the new facility’s electric-powered tamping device, which costs less to run than the previous station’s diesel mechanism.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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