Companies see treasure in managing Greensboro's trash
GREENSBORO — You could heat it up and transform it into something useful. Or you could bury it underground and forget about it. What will Greensboro do with its tons of trash?
A handful of companies have lined up to expand and operate the city-owned White Street Landfill — some offering incentives to the landfill’s neighbors for the trouble of living next to the facility. Others have even suggested alternative ways to turn the waste into usable energy.
But it’s anybody’s guess what City Council members will do with the nine proposals received last week to handle the city’s trash disposal system. Council members said they still are reviewing the voluminous proposals.
City Manager Rashad Young said the council will have to start by giving the staff some policy direction because the proposals were so broad.
“It is going to be hard, I think, for us to try to evaluate. How do you weight them?” he said.
City employees collect household trash and take it to a transfer station, where it is packed into large trucks and shuttled 70 miles to a landfill in Mount Gilead — a more expensive, but more politically palatable garbage disposal alternative than using White Street.
The Greensboro-owned, 1,000-acre White Street Landfill has been closed to all but construction debris since neighbors won a long battle with the city.
When the transfer station was less than two years old , some council members began second guessing the 2001 decision to stop using the landfill. Some argued it was a waste of city money when the landfill still has room for trash.
Last year, City Council members put out a broad request to private companies, asking for ideas.
The responses ran the gambit from low- to high-tech options.
And almost all the companies — including large trash management companies Waste Management, Waste Industries, Waste Connections and Advanced Disposal — suggested reopening the White Street Landfill to household trash.
Each recommended various ways to expand and better use the city’s dump .
Some would pay a premium to the neighborhood to use the landfill. Two groups suggested building recreation facilities on closed portions of the landfill.
CICO, led by local businessmen including former council member Bob Mays, would funnel some money into a nonprofit development company to build up land near the landfill.
“It’s using the landfill as an economic development engine, whereas everyone has looked at it as negative for so long,” said Mays, who pushed the council to request trash proposals. “We make it into a positive. We help push toward improvements in the community.”
It’s not clear whether the current City Council, elected late last year, would even consider using the landfill. Some members are opposed to the idea, while others, such as Mayor Bill Knight, have said they want to explore trash options.
Three companies with local ties — CICO, Ulturnagen and MRR Southern — recommended waste-to-energy technologies that would turn some of the trash into usable commodities, such as electricity or fuels.
MRR Southern, the only company that did not want to use the White Street Landfill property, proposed a kind of burning method that would create electricity and leave behind ash.
The company recommended using land, owned by D.H. Griffin, south of Interstate 85 and west of Holden Road.
“If you look at it simply, the cheapest thing to do with waste is throw it in a hole,” said Daniel Moore from MRR Southern. “That’s just not palatable to so many people that I think they need to look at something else.”
It is difficult to tell by comparing the proposals which would save the city money. While some companies recommended fees or profit-sharing methods in their proposals, others said prices could be negotiated after the city chose them.
Young suggested that the city could use an environmental consultant to review the proposals. The City Council could discuss the options as early as its March 16 meeting.
Contact Amanda Lehmert at 373-7075 or amanda.lehmert@news-record.com
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