OGDEN -- Five years of frustration and delay were consigned to the scrapheap Thursday as Weber County commissioners finally approved a $5.48 million contract to build a solid waste transfer station south of the 20th-21st Street Expressway in Ogden.
The commission tweaked a few items on the final contract submitted by Deputy County Attorney David Wilson before unanimously endorsing the document and clearing the way for construction.Commercial waste haulers and individual Weber County residents will dump their garbage at the station on 800 West Exchange Road, where it will be loaded into rail cars and shipped to the massive East Carbon Development Corp. landfill near Price.
Construction on the 42,000-square-foot transfer station is expected to begin sometime in October and should be complete by next August or September.
Since Weber County closed its landfill in 1997 and began using the ECDC "garbage train" to haul off solid waste, the former incinerator building at the old county landfill site in West Ogden has been used as a temporary transfer station.
"It has worked out till now, but it has been wearing out fast," said Gary Laird, county operations director.
Commission Chairman Glen Burton noted the temporary waste collection process requires additional handling of the garbage that adds $2 per ton to the county's disposal costs.
Since the county currently transfers between 160,000 and 180,000 tons of garbage annually, Laird said, the new transfer station will cut costs between $320,000 and $360,000 annually.
The new 200-fby 210-foot metal transfer building will be erected by Bud Bailey Construction.
Laird said commercial hauls will dump their loads on one side of the building while the public will unload trash on the other. Front-end loaders will then compact the waste and push it down chutes into railroad cars for the trip to Carbon County.
"This is a long-awaited event," said Burton, ending a planning process that began two commissions ago. "It will enable us to complete the closure of the old landfill."
Finding a suitable site for the transfer station has caused much of the delay.
A previous commission settled on a different location but ran into problems with the original site and also encountered an unexpected groundswell of public opposition.
Even the final site has generated its share of controversy because it is near one of Ogden's most prominent "gateways," and some people have been concerned about having a waste station at a key entry point to the city.
County officials also had to deal with questions about railroad access and soil composition. The latter problem was solved by compacting the ground under the site, delaying construction for a time while the contractor waits for the soil to finish settling.
All those issues became moot, however, with the approval of the construction contract.
"We're anxious to get on with this because of the $2 per ton handling cost," Burton added.