Orange County just got another estimate on its landfill lifespan.
But it didn't gain any time. The landfill is still expected to fill up and close in April 2011, says a consultant's estimate released this week.
Solid Waste Director Gayle Wilson said he'd hoped to gain a few months, and that the landfill bought a new compactor to try and squeeze in more trash. But a change in state regulations about what can go into construction waste dumps means more construction-type trash has to go into the municipal landfill, he said.
The county is in the middle of a search to find a transfer station site for a building where trash will be collected to be shipped out of the county.
There's a possibility the transfer station won't be ready in time, Wilson said. The county may need an interim solution, possibly an open-air concrete slab that would serve as a temporary transfer station.
The Orange County Commissioners had originally decided to put the transfer station where the landfill is now. But neighbors say they've lived next to the solid waste operations for long enough, and the board decided to reopen the search process late last year.
Comments
what surreal news
Thu, 07/10/2008 - 08:55 — marcoplosIn 1992, Wilson & his then boss Bruce Heflin projected the landfill to be full in 1996 or 1997. This was their reasoning for disallowing the public's suggestion that we pause the landfill search for 6 months to a year in order to assess what an aggressive waste-reduction strategy would do to reduce the gargantuan land footprint that was thwarting the landfill search process.
On behalf of our county-wide Citizen's Landfill Council, I submitted an analysis that showed our current landfill would last until 2004, not 1996. They scoffed at that conclusion.
Now we are poised to dump our garbage on some poor community over the horizon & they have a problem with landfill capacity which should never have occurred.