Transfer Station Concept For Increased Efficiency and Traffic Reduction Moving Forward in District 1

The initial, draft conceptual drawing of the proposed District 1 Godwin Lane Transfer station was provided back in January.  The purple line shows the proposed ingress-egress of the trucks that will enter and exit the facility daily

Back in January I toured ECUA's proposed transfer station site on Godwin Lane at Pine Forest Road.  With me for the tour were ECUA District 1 Board Member Vicki Campbell and ECUA Residential Waste Services Supervisor Keith Kyles.  I had lots of questions and the ECUA staff present had the answers.

This transfer station project has been pursued by ECUA for several years as the community has grown, the demand for residential waste pick up has increased,  and as the County's Palafox Street transfer station has out grown its capacity.  A transfer station is simply a place where residential waste garbage trucks can consolidate their loads into larger trucks, keeping the residential trucks in the field locally longer without the need to drive all the way out to the Perdido Landfill in Beulah between route stops.  The route garbage trucks fill up-- and then transfer their loads to much larger semi-truck trailers that then carry the larger loads to the landfill multiple times daily.  This process increases efficiency for the routes, saves fuel, and most importantly----reduces traffic congestion in District 1 between Pine Forest Road and the Perdido Landfill on Beulah Road.

The transfer station property on Godwin lane in District 1-- where the proposed new transfer station will be built-- is already owned and maintained by ECUA at this time.  It is currently an administrative office complex, truck parking facility, Pensacola Energy CNG refilling station, and waste container storage yard.  There is plenty of space to build the transfer station while leaving plenty of natural vegetative "buffer" between what will be built and nearby properties.  I have spoken to nearby business owners who seem generally accepting toward the new plan---with reasonable limitations in place.

At this past Thursday's BCC committee of the whole meeting of the Escambia of County Commissioners, these limitations were discussed and formalized into a written document.  An inter-local agreement was put forward by staff which was generally acceptable to the board.  This agreement has some stipulations that the county added which were reasonable:  Hours of operation will only be between the hours of 6:00AM and 6:00PM daily, the trucks will ONLY use Pine Forest Road (not Godwin Lane) for ingress and egress, and garbage will not be kept on the premises overnight or for extended periods of time.  There are other stipulations and limitations in the agreement which protect the county's position on multiple other points--most important of which is the flow control concept.  Flow control is simply the rule which stipulates that the garbage generated and collected locally by ECUA must be brought to our landfill in Escambia Count;  the reasoning behind this is that ECUA's business brings a lot of revenue to the county's landfill and therefore it is in the county's interest to maintain this revenue stream by not permitting these loads to be taken out of the county.

For my part, I was only going to accept this agreement if the term was broken up into an initial term and subsequent extension years--which the board agreed was a reasonable modification.  (e.g. as presented, the original agreement gave the ECUA a 20 year license to operate the transfer station.  After I objected, everyone settled in on an initial term of 10 years with one or more options for an additional 10 year period.)

Once the Inter-Local agreement is ratified at a subsequent meeting of the Board of County Commissioners and ECUA's governing board--the process to design, plan, peremit, and ultimately construct this facility will commence in earnest.  And the project will go through the county's development review process to insure it meets with all environmental and building codes prior to approval.

More to follow on this project in the months to come--but initially this is a good example of coordination between entities to improve service to citizens.