WILMINGTON — New Hanover County and its municipalities will hold a joint workshop Thursday at 6 p.m. on the local 10-year Solid Waste Plan, developed to meet waste disposal needs and guard human and environmental health.
The legally required document (click here to view) outlines the waste reduction and cost efficiency goals of the county, Wilmington, Carolina Beach, Kure Beach and Wrightsville Beach and is supposed to be updated every three years.
For the 2012 update, officials will compile input from residents throughout the county. Thursday’s meeting will take place in Human Resources Training Room A at the New Hanover County Government Center, 230 Government Center Drive.
A news bulletin from the City of Wilmington said the county and municipal governments will hold the public meeting in conjunction with one another. The county will present an overview of the current draft plan and address related questions. City staffers will also be on hand.
First update in six years
The latest updating process comes at a time of uncertainty following the New Hanover County Board of Commissioners September 17 decision not to pursue a contract for the refurbishment of the county’s old energy-from-waste incinerator, or “sustainable energy facility” (SEF). The point was to put the SEF back online and burn off a large portion of the waste stream to save space and time at the county landfill off U.S. 421, which has only six years of permitted space remaining.
Currently, the entire waste stream heads into the landfill.
While an expansion of the dump is planned—if successful, it would add about 45 years of new dumping ground, or double that if the SEF is reactivated—securing the permits alone can take years, officials said.
Despite law requiring a revision to the solid waste plan every three years, this would be the first since 2006.
“In 2009, during the time of the plan update, New Hanover County requested an exemption from submitting a 3-year plan update due to extreme flux and uncertainty in solid waste management,” the plan’s summary states. “The County’s goal to secure a sustainable, long-term solution to solid waste management suffered a setback with the termination of the contract with R3 Environmental.”
R3 was a company on tap to reduce the need for landfill space on the waste-to-energy conversion plan, but the company in a March 2011 statement said that, “for a variety of unanticipated reasons, the task proved more challenging than anticipated and, in the end, R3 was not able to secure the funding necessary to proceed with the project.”
According to the 10-year plan, New Hanover County and its municipalities will create roughly 260,400 tons of waste this fiscal year. The waste-reduction goal for fiscal 2016, the plan said, is 60.83 percent.
“The primary factors influencing this aggressive waste reduction goal,” the document explained, “are broken into five categories: re-start of the county’s (SEF); evolution in curbside recycling collection; improved diversion of recyclable material at the landfill; implementation of a curbside yard waste collection program; and improvements to the (household hazardous waste) programs.”
Residents who cannot attend Thursday’s meeting may submit comments by email to city Superintendent of Solid Waste Dave Bundick at [email protected]. The deadline will be noon September 27.
Persons may also mail comments to City of Wilmington Solid Waste Management Office, 235 Operations Center Drive, Wilmington, N.C. 28412, or make them in person at that address.
For more information, call Budnick at (910) 341-7875.
