The New Hanover County Board of Commissioners just after noon on Monday voted down the proposed $32.6 million contract toward the refurbishment of the county’s defunct incinerator.
Commissioner Jonathan Barfield had made a motion to approve the contract, which would have set up landfill tipping fees potentially upward of $90 per ton to support the expense. But after Chairman Ted Davis spent several minutes voicing his concerns about the contract, the board ended up with a 3-2 vote against.
Only Commissioner Jason Thompson voted with Barfield.
The vote threw into question the future of solid waste disposal in New Hanover County, as the point of the incinerator’s refurbishment—on a contract with waste-to-energy conversion business Covanta Energy—was to burn off trash that otherwise would fill the county’s cramped landfill off U.S. 421.
That landfill has, roughly, just six years of permitted space left and an effort underway to expand it onto an adjacent 90 acres has years to go. Permitting alone could take three to four years, officials have said, and that phase is in its early stage.
But, as Davis pointed out in his remarks Monday, there’s no guarantee the county will even secure the permits. There’s also no guarantee the tipping fees proposed to support the incinerator’s reactivation would absolutely cover all of its costs, he said.
In the proposal, staff had recommended landfill tipping fees of $89.65 to $91.65 per ton to cover the annual debt payments of $2.2 million for 20 years and a one-time payment of $1.8 million to outfit the incinerator with pollution control devices. County analyst Beth Schrader told the commissioners those tipping fees were calculated conservatively and would cover the project’s costs.
Davis was concerned with the possibility they wouldn’t and, ultimately, that the county would have to tap the taxpayers for the difference. If that would become the case, “It’s going to fall on my back, your back … and I’m not very comfortable with that,” he said.
Commissioner Barfield had already put his motion on the floor to approve the contract with Covanta to refurbish the facility, first built in 1984 and taken offline last year due to its ailing condition. Barfield said moving ahead with the repairs to and reactivation of the incinerator would keep with “our job and responsibility to show true leadership.”
Ever since the county took the incinerator offline, 100 percent of the county’s solid waste stream has entered the landfill and built anxiety among officials who know space and time are running out and solutions for debris are uncertain.
“My opinion is it’s time to move forward,” Barfield said with his motion to approve the contract with Covanta, seconded by Commissioner Rick Catlin, who ultimately voted against it alongside Commissioner Brian Berger and Chairman Davis.
Davis said he understood the importance of prolonging the landfill’s life—if the expansion doesn’t work out, there would not be a newly developed dump elsewhere in the county, he explained—but the uncertainties for the taxpayers created a hang-up.
“As a conservative … I’m going to do what I know from my heart is the best thing for the taxpayers of this county,” Davis said. “Because the taxpayers have always come first for me since I’ve been a commissioner.”
Davis joined the commission in 1996.
“I don’t know where that puts us,” he said after the vote. “What we need to do is commissioners need to meet with staff and we’ll see where we go from here.”
If the county can successfully expand onto the adjacent tract it would add about 45 years’ worth space to dump trash in this growing region, county officials said at a workshop last week on the topic. They added that the incinerator’s reactivation and operation by Covanta—which would have cost the county just less than $12.5 million per year—could double the life of that land.
Otherwise, project officials said the county could explore hauling a portion of the waste stream to another county. It’s a route Brunswick and Pender counties have taken as they do not operate their own municipal solid waste dumps. Instead, they contract with Waste Industries to haul the garbage to a landfill the company operates in Sampson County.
County staffers had informed commissioners that choosing that alternative would not be exponentially cheaper for New Hanover County than investing in the local incinerator; the tipping fee, Schrader said, would still have to be in the range of $78 to $87 per ton.
New Hanover County’s current tipping fee for a ton of municipal solid waste is $59.
Schrader and fellow project officials also said there would be no guarantee that a third-party landfill would be around to accept New Hanover County’s waste.
But during a public hearing on the topic Monday morning, resident Chris Anderson told county commissioners they could indeed stake out a place in the Sampson County landfill if they desired. By contract, he said, New Hanover County could reserve decades of space.
“That airspace belongs to you,” Anderson said, referring to the area the county could place its trash at another landfill. “They’re not going to oversell airspace.”
Anderson was one of two individuals who spoke against the proposed Covanta contract at Monday’s public hearing. Nine spoke in favor of it, including Wilmington Chamber of Commerce’s David Spetrino, who said the incinerator’s reactivation would lend to public opinion that the county is “forward thinking” and thoughtful of the needs future generations will have.
“Our community—whether we like it or not, it continues to grow and will continue to grow,” Spetrino said.
