Howell Residents Up In Arms Over Proposed Waste Transfer Site

SEATTLE (Waste Advantage): Residents are vehemently opposed to the potential construction of a waste transfer station at 34 Randolph Road in Howell Township. Piling into the meeting room of the Howell Township Municipal Building on Jan. 25, residents and officials alike voiced concerns and posed numerous questions as to the fate of Howell Township, should this facility be built.

“The entire governing body vigorously opposes the waste transfer station in Howell Township,” said Deputy Mayor Robert Nicastro.

The meeting, led by the Monmouth County Solid Waste Advisory Council (SWAC), ran for nearly three hours as residents asked officials to reject this proposal. The meeting was augmented by detailed presentations by Insite Engineering, the site engineer for the applicant Resource Engineering, LLC, and McDonough & Rea Associates, traffic engineers for this proposal.

This meeting was held to become a source of public record for the Monmouth County Board of Chosen Freeholders and was mediated by Christopher Beekman.

“The purpose of this memorandum is to advise the public of general information related to application that seek admittance to the County’s Solid Waste Management Plan and also specific information related to the pending application of Resource Engineering, LLC,” said Beekman as he kicked off the meeting, reading from a memorandum.

The timeline of the proposal began when Resource Engineering, LLC first applied for a waste transfer station in 2015. After review by the Township council and SWAC, it was decided that certain conditions need to be met by the applicant for the proposal to be approved. They then made the necessary updates to the plan and in March of 2017, conditions for the proposal were met by the applicant, and Howell Township issued a letter of consent for the proposal. In May of 2017, SWAC held a meeting where the vote in favor of the transfer station was unanimous and thus recommended to the Freeholders for approval. Prior to the Freeholders meeting on July 27, 2017, SWAC received numerous letters from Howell officials expressing conflicting views to Howell officials’ original stance, causing a halt in the approval process.

The proposal advocates for the construction of a recycling transfer station that will be the turnover site for sorting out and recycling solid waste in the form of construction and demolition debris, according to Patrick Ward of InSite Engineering. The site is currently home to the Wood Recycling Facility, which will be expanded upon for this purpose.

“Transfer stations collect debris from smaller point sources (contractors and homeowners) and transport it in bulk to final disposal sites,” it stated in Ward’s presentation. “This recycling transfer station is not a dump,” or a landfill, he emphasized.

Courtesy: https://wasteadvantagemag.com