Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 17, 1994 TAG: 9405170123
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By ERIKA BOLSTAD STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
You can't hear the constant ``beep-beep-beep'' of heavy equipment backing up, see the choking clouds of dust or smell the overwhelming odor of garbage.
But to the director of the transfer station and everyone else awaiting its start-up, the sights, smells and sounds inside are indications of Monday's almost perfect opening.
Almost everything went smoothly, said John Hubbard, director of the transfer station. The transfer station, on Hollins Road Northeast, processed 959 tons of trash, heavy traffic even for a Monday.
``I thought we would have more problems than we have had so far,'' Hubbard said. ``Things went better than I thought they would.''
Contractors who have spent the past two years working on the building were glad to see the transfer station in operation, but they weren't ready for their building to be sullied with trash.
``Look at all of that trash,'' one electrician said. ``And we built such a beautiful building here.''
Directing garbage trucks and getting crews used to new equipment seemed to be the biggest problems of the day.
Garbage trucks had only a short wait to dump their trash once the drivers pulled up from the scales.
``This is so much nicer than that mud hole we had to work out of before. Right now, no wait is over five minutes,'' said Kenneth Kinzie, directing traffic into the transfer station.
Once they are weighed and enter the transfer station, the trucks dump loads of trash onto the floor of the 158-feet-by-109-feet building. The ceiling is so high that a few small birds fly in through the open doors and circle above the trash on the floor.
City and county residents with pickups full of household trash maneuver among the big municipal garbage trucks.
It costs $55 a ton to dump commercial garbage. Roanoke residents pay $5 a load but Roanoke County residents can dump for free, because the transfer station bills the county.
Mike Lumsden, hauling a load of shingles from a roofing job, said driving over ``crushed stuff'' almost gave him a flat tire on his pickup every time he went out to the old landfill in Mount Pleasant.
Once the garbage is dumped, huge front-end loaders with 5-foot-high tires push the trash toward the drop slot, right into the rail cars that take the trash to the new Smith Gap landfill, 33 miles away near the Montgomery County line.
Long-armed compactors mash the garbage into the rail cars, stopping when they fill each with about 75 tons.
When the cars are full, the driver of the rail car mover is signaled and the line of rail cars moves out, one car at a time.
Outside again, but on the other side of the building, with a remote control, a crew member puts a lid on the rail car.
``The smell is not as bad as I thought it would be out here,'' Hubbard said. ``I don't think you will even smell it at the front door.''
At about 6:30 p.m. each day, when the final car is loaded, the train pulls out and heads for the landfill.
by CNB