Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 24, 1994 TAG: 9403010198
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
But a county supervisor wants to make sure that those plans - which call for Montgomery, Blacksburg, Christiansburg and Virginia Tech to join with the New River Resource Authority in opening a new landfill in Pulaski County five years from now - are clear.
Supervisor Joe Gorman, who represents a portion of Blacksburg, agreed Monday to lead a review of Montgomery's 1991 solid waste plan. Gorman and two staff experts will review it and come back to the Board of Supervisors with an updated policy statement.
"Right now we're like a ship without a rudder," said Gorman, who has made recycling and solid-waste planning his speciality since his 1991 election to the board. Gorman brought up the review during a budget work session focused in part on landfill operations; Chairman Larry Linkous asked him to lead such an effort and he accepted.
From a public point of view, Montgomery's trash plan resembles the way Winston Churchill once described Russia: it's a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
The county only confirmed its search for a new landfill in December 1992 after two months of pressure from residents of the Flatwoods area of eastern Montgomery. The current Mid-County Landfill is due to run out of space by 1999.
Those same Flatwoods- and Ironto-area residents, who subsequently organized under the name Save Our Soils, kept up the pressure on the board through much of last year.
But during that time most of the supervisors' discussion of future trash plans, and even plans for a regional recycling center near the current Mid-County Landfill, occurred behind closed doors.
At some point late last year the board came to a consensus - again behind closed doors - that joining the effort to develop a new, regional landfill in Pulaski County would be a better option than building a new county landfill or joining Roanoke County's operation at Smith Gap, just over the Montgomery line. Earlier, the board also had considered and rejected a regional trash incinerator.
Negotiations with the New River Resource Authority, made up of Radford, Pulaski County and the towns of Pulaski and Dublin, have been ongoing since October. County officials will not discuss the details of those talks, which were to have ended in January.
But the apparent sticking point is who among the towns, Tech and Montgomery County will get representation on the resource authority's board, which sets tipping fees. The new landfill is to be located on 350 acres off Highland Road on the south side of Cloyds Mountain in Pulaski County. If Montgomery does go in on the project, the county will likely have to build a garbage transfer station to collect trash at a central point and transport it to Pulaski.
The New River Resource Authority, which operates the Ingles Mountain landfill in Radford, has a permit for the new landfill and is going through condemnation proceedings against the owner, according to authority official Fred Hilliard. The total land acquisition will include 957 acres.
Montgomery County runs its current landfill out of a self-supporting "enterprise fund," not general tax revenues. According to the 1994-95 budget proposal, the county expects to spend $5.3 million to run the landfill and recycling efforts beginning July 1.
Garbage collection at so-called "green-box" sites across the county, on the other hand, is paid for out of tax revenues. Spending for such collection is scheduled to increase 8 percent to $1.15 million as of July 1, largely because of improvements to a collection site on Prices Fork Road and plans to do the same in the Elliston area.
Gorman questioned whether the county should leave the landfill's garbage tipping fee at $53 a ton. Last year, the board anticipated raising the rate to $56 a ton. Gorman said Monday he was concerned that not raising the fee next year might mean the enterprise fund would run into red ink in future years.
by CNB