Winterport inches toward waste transfer station

WINTERPORT — Officials here have entered Phase II of negotiations with Civil Engineering Sevices of Brewer in the effort to build a badly needed waste disposal transfer station at Winterport Airport.

Phase II involves getting site plan approval from the Department of Environmental Protection, finalizing the disposal site’s design with CES, and performing hydrological studies, according to Town Manager Arthur Ellingwood. He predicted the studies and engineering could cost about $30,000.

Phase I consisted of primary conceptual design and studies, and initial cost estimates.

Ellingwood said “ping pong” negotiations and the approval process should be complete by February, and final cost figures could be ready for the town meeting in March.

“Right now a very liberal figure is $600,000,” he said. “The Solid Waste and Recycling Committee expects, by working closely with DEP, they can scale that back to the $400,000 mark.”

The new transfer station will eliminate the existing dump on Stream Road, and “will reduce any potential for environmental hazards,” Ellingwood added.

Joe Brooks, a member of the Solid Waste and Recycling Committee, said the $600,000 fee was the result of a “worst case scenario” rendered by the Brewer engineering firm. Civil Engineering calculated the project’s highest cost estimate, Brooks explained. That figure will likely be trimmed as the transfer stations nears realization.

The project was broken up into phases, he went on, so that the town could budget funds for research and construction. The site’s proposed location, situated at the end of the airport runway off Route 139, cannot be seen from the road.

This “state of the art” waste disposal site will feature a canopied transfer station, open-faced containers to dispose of non-household materials, and a dumping site for demolition debris, Brooks said.

“The transfer station, dependent on technological changes in how we deal with trash, will last forever,” he said. “You’re not depositing anything into the ground, nothing stays in Winterport.”

Household trash will be sent to Penobscot Energy Recovering Co. in Orrington, and white goods will be picked up by scrap metal dealers.

The demolition debris site should have a life of about 40 years, Brooks predicted. Rubble will be piled to a specific height, and then leveled, covered and seeded, a process termed “reclaiming.”

“The ultimate goal of this transfer station is recycling,” he said. An area off the paved access road will be set aside for a recycling facility.

Meanwhile, Winterport is awaiting approval of the closure plan for the existing dump on Stream Road; the town submitted that paperwork to state officials in 1987, Ellingwood said. “I understand our plan in being reviewed now,” he added.