City leaders appear adamantly opposed to a massive garbage recycling-and-transfer station the county wants to build on the north edge of town.
"Everyone was against it," City Councilman Dave Nicol said of a Tuesday council discussion on the project."It was the consensus of the council that we want to do whatever it will take to not only keep it out of Midvale but out of any residential area of any city," added Kevin Jorgensen, another council member.
Jorgensen said the council is considering passing an ordinance that would outlaw the project. He and Nicol said it would be better located in a rural setting.
The facility as envisioned by William H. Finney, the county's director of sanitation, would include three buildings with a total of 77,000 square feet and would cover 10 acres at 6900 S. 550 West, a site from which the county now operates its fleet of street-maintenance trucks. The location is near the Midvale-Murray boundary and within view of I-15.
A formal request for bids will go out within the next 30 to 45 days, said Finney. He said objections to the project are premature because construction hasn't started yet.
"How do you complain about something that's conceptual?" he said.
Midvale officials say they can complain about it because it appears well on its way. In an Aug. 17 city memo, city planners said the county already has hired an engineering-architectural firm to lay the groundwork and has also built a railroad spur to the site.
Randy Horiuchi, a member of the Salt Lake County Commission, seems especially interested in seeing the garbage station built, said Jorgensen.
According to the minutes from a July 12 county commission meeting, Horiuchi said he "wants to get on with" the project and said he expects it to come in "lower and faster" than typical county efforts.
"Randy Horiuchi says he's Mr. Environment, but if he really cared, why would he be willing to stick this in a city by residential homes?" said Jorgensen.
Horiuchi this week did not return calls about the subject.
Finney said he hopes construction on the project will begin by mid-winter or early spring.
The facility would be a clearinghouse for two kinds of garbage - yard waste and household recyclables, he said. Refuse would be trucked to the site from throughout Salt Lake County, sorted and processed, then transported elsewhere by either truck or rail.Skip Criner, the city's director of development services, said he and other city workers visited a similar operation in Utah County and found it unsightly.
Criner, who noted the site is zoned for light industry, said it would be better suited for that. He said the city is concerned about traffic the station would attract and that there are worries that it will smell bad, cause noise pollution and create a litter problem.
Finney said trash-handling will be done in enclosed facilities and that the city's fears are generally unfounded.
"Maybe we're a little paranoid, but we've already got two Superfund sites here and we just feel like everything's coming our way," said Nicol. "I can't think of any way it would benefit Midvale."
"It would create a few more jobs at this location," said Finney. "And we spend an awful lot of money in Midvale. I eat in Midvale almost everyday. I buy gas in Midvale."