WESTFIELD – A surveying consultant has been hired to initiate the first step in the process of receiving a higher trash-tipping permit at the Twiss Street transfer station. That first step, to determine what tonnage the existing facility can accommodate, was discussed Wednesday night the Board of Health meeting.
The city has been operating for nearly two decades under a 50-ton-per-day tip limit allowed under the permit issued by the state Department of Environmental Protection in the early 1990s when the landfill was closed and replaced with a transfer station.
A transfer station is a facility where trash is collected and consolidated, then transported to some other facility for final disposal, unlike the old landfill where the trash was collected, piled, and then covered with soil for decomposition.
Mayor Daniel M. Knapik and City Council members identified the transfer station several years ago as a possible source of revenue, if the tip limit can be increased. The current permit sets that tip limit at 50 ton-per-day, just sufficient for the current curbside trash collection program.
If the city can obtain a tip limit increase it can explore other options, such as accepting trash from city businesses, or it could explore the possibility of accepting different type of refuse such as construction debris now prohibited from the current facility.
Tighe & Bond, the city’s consultant on that project, recently contracted with a division of WSP USA Corp. formerly known as WSP Sells which was founded in 1925 by Charles Sells. The firm, headquartered in Briarcliff Manor, NY, provides planning, design, construction and maintenance of public and private infrastructure.
Advancement Officer Jeff Daley said yesterday that WSP will initiate a survey of the current transfer station to determine what tip tonnage the site would support.
“We’re looking to increase the tip tonnage to some number,” Daley said. “There has to be an in-depth survey to determine if we have the space to accept more tonnage.”
“The mayor and members of the City Council want this project to move forward,” Daley said at a May meeting of the Health Board. “We are prepared to go to the (City) Council for a free cash allocation. The mayor wants this to move forward because it is an economic development project.”
Phase 1 of the tip tonnage increase process is to complete a survey or schematic design of the facility, for which WSP was retained, and to initiate the MEPA environmental notification form process, a requirement of the Tighe & Bond contract.
The city signed a contract in June with Tighe & Bond to manage the project and to provide design and permitting services to the city to upgrade the existing facility, including designs for a building that will enclose the new tipping facility. That work will also include revamping the existing traffic movement pattern within the nine-acre facility.
There are a number of issues with reconfiguring the existing site, as well as requirements imposed by the DEP and federal regulators. One of those requirements, imposed by both the state DEP and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is that the present open-air tipping area be covered or relocated to an area where a building can be constructed to eliminate the congregation of large birds, such as turkey vultures, seagulls and ravens, which feed at the open-air facility and which are a threat to aircraft using Barnes Regional Airport, located a short distance, as the crow flies, from the transfer station.
Tighe & Bond Vice President Dana Huff and Project Manager Jaclyn Caceci presented details of the transfer station upgrade in June to the Board of Health.
“There is a market out there (for commercial trash disposal),” Huff said at that time. “especially the local guys who don’t want to go far because of the rising fuel prices.”
“So there is a chance for the city to make some money,” Huff said. “The Twiss Street site makes sense because it already has a site assignment (issued through the DEP) and it’s isolated, so it a great location. Right now the highest and best use of that site is to improve it.”
