With only about a year left for Kestrel Hawk Landfill, what’s Racine’s plan for trash? | Local News

After analyzing their options, the City Council has decided the best way forward is to construct a transfer station.

The City Council voted on March 15 to contract with Foth Infrastructure & Environment, LLC to develop plans, specifications and estimates for design and interim planning for the construction of a city-owned transfer station.

This phase of the project will cost approximately $55,600.

Foth was contracted by the city for the first phase of the project, which entailed an analysis of the options the city had for the city’s trash. The company spent seven months collecting data in order to present the merits, costs, and disadvantages to four options.

John Rooney, commissioner of the Department of Public Works, outlined the issues to the Committee of the Whole on March 15.

“This is one of the biggest challenges facing the Department of Public Works and the city of Racine in the near future,” Rooney said.

One of those challenges is the landfill will certainly close, likely sometime in early 2023, before the city finishes the transfer station in fall.

During the interim, the city will have to haul the city’s trash to another landfill. Due to the distance, extra personnel and trucks will be needed, and the estimated cost of the temporary hauling is $70,000/per month.

The city manages approximately 28,000 tons of solid waste and 5,000 tons of recycling annually.

The contract with Foth is just the first step in what could be a long process for constructing a city-owned transfer station.

Currently, trucks pick up the garbage and take it to the Kestrel Hawk Landfill, located at 1989 Oakes Road, the corner of Oakes and 16th Street.

As of 2018, the landfill was accepting about 600 tons of solid waste per day, which equals about 219,000 tons per year. Less than an eighth of that tonnage comes from the City of Racine.

Once the transfer station is completed, the city trucks will take the garbage there. A company contracted by the city will then pick up the garbage for disposal in a landfill, either one they own or one they contract with.

Municipal transfer stations are typically enclosed and are emptied out every day, which should cut down on concerns by neighbors about the smell.

The project would require about 2 acres of property, the cost of which would depend on the property.

The cost of construction for the building and necessary equipment — such as a scale, a large front-end loader and compactor — would cost close to $3 million.

Although cost was an important consideration, the continuation of current services was also important.

In an interview, Rooney noted that very few municipalities continue to offer the services available to those in Racine.

Other municipalities have fully automated collection, he explained, with a side loader that allows drivers to stay in their vehicles. If there is extra material, an extra trash bag, it will probably not be picked up, he said.

In other places, if a person doesn’t get their cart to the corner early enough, public works is probably not going to circle back; whereas in Racine, if there’s a vehicle in the area they’ll swing back to get it, Rooney said.

“These little things people appreciate and have come to expect, those services could easily go away or become too expensive,” he said about some of the options that were before the council.

Rooney described the process of implementing both a temporary and permanent solution to the issue as having “a lot of moving parts.”

However, once it is done, it will carry the city through the next few decades, he added.

The city considered a number of other options.

For example, Rooney said DPW approached Kenosha to see if there was any interest in a joint municipal transfer station, with trash hauled to a landfill in Kenosha, but that did not pan out.

Two of the four options presented by Foth included the privatization of the entire system, and the possibility of hauling the trash to a different landfill.

Both of those options were deemed too expensive.

Rooney explained there were six factors the city considered:

• Cost (capital costs and operational)
• Financial risk
• Operation impacts
• Timeline
• Impact on users
• Potential regulatory issues

However, the six factors were not given equal weight. Potential costs, for example, carried the greatest weight.

Currently, waste management costs $80 per parcel. That figure represents the $3.2 million cost and $1.1 million in revenue averaged out over 27,000 parcels.

The cost of any new system was compared to what the city is currently paying. Every single system examined represented a cost increase, some more than others.

As one example, to direct haul to a new landfill would increase costs to $117 per parcel, due primarily to the fact the trash would have to be hauled a further distance — requiring additional drivers and equipment.

Although the city would incur costs in building the transfer station, once built the operational costs would be approximately the same.

However, there will be a certain loss of revenue once the landfill closes. The city receives a host fee for having a landfill, for example, which approximates to $200,000.

DPW waste management has revenue from several sources. For example, waste management gets rent on the trucks used for leaf and yard waste pickup and employee costs.