Consider the information below for Saranac County, your SWMP outline prepared in Module 2 Assignment 2, as well as your information from the Module 2 Discussion, and your landfill design from Module 3. Prepare a presentation to a county committee for input and approval to move forward with your proposed plan.
The waste composition for this county follows the standard waste composition except 40% of the resident’s dispose of their food waste in either garbage disposals to the local sewer or backyard composting piles. 30% of recyclables are sent to a local recycling plant.
Once/if the county landfill closes, the next closest landfill is 30 miles away with a $60/ton tipping fee. If permitted, the waste-to-energy incinerator will be 45 miles away with an $85/ton tipping fee. A rough estimate to design, permit and build a landfill expansion is $100M to $200M, with monthly operational fees of $250,000 to $400,000. The expansion would be good for another 25 years of capacity.
Another option is to build a transfer station for trucks to dump locally, and then have larger hauling trucks transport the waste to one of the other close landfills, or maybe a further landfill with cheaper tipping fees. It’s estimated to cost $2.5M to build the transfer station plus 3 full-time people to operate it.
On first glance, your options for solid waste management after the regional landfill closes are:
1. Permit and build a landfill expansion.
a. Just for your county
b. Open to outside the county as well
2. Truck to a landfill 30 miles away
3. Build a transfer station and truck to the landfill 30 miles away
4. Support the incinerator and hope that gets permitted
5. Something else?
Discuss the pros, cons and feasibility of each option and why you are proposing what you are.
Please make a 3 minute powerpoint presentation. Attached within are documents that I have presented thus far leading up to this point. Suggestions made to enhance the conceptual landfill were the addition of a weight scale on the other side of traffic, ground water monitoring wells and a better demarcation of the old and new cells of the landfill.
