Every ten years, the County is required by state law to draft a new plan to chart out its available capacity for waste disposal and its strategy to keep up with projected demands. According to waste authority executive director James Warner, the new 2010 Lancaster County Municipal Waste Management Plan will address the need for additional landfill capacity, additional waste-to-energy plant capacity, and new initiatives for increased food waste composting.
The Lancaster County commissioners are expected to approve the plan at their April 14 public meeting.
According to Warner, by 2019, the county will run out of space at its Frey Farm Landfill, unless capacity is increased. There currently remains about 116 acres of unused space, which is not expected to last beyond that deadline at the decade’s end. In the meantime, Warner said, the waste authority plans to begin pursuing a vertical expansion of the existing landfill, which should secure enough additional space to last the county until 2042.
Permit work for this project would have to begin in 2013, Warner said, which would allow construction to begin in 2017.
Also considered in the plan is the potential addition of new, smaller transfer stations in non-central parts of the county. Such expansions—being considered for the Quarryville, Denver, or Gap areas—would allow waste to be deposited for eventual transport to the primary station on Harrisburg Pike. Currently half of the county’s waste is delivered to Harrisburg Pike while the other half is taken directly to the Frey Farm site in Manor Township.
The plan, Warner said, also proposes an expansion at the current waste-to-energy plant in Conoy Township. With the addition of a new 600 ton per day processing unit, the plant’s capacity would immediately increase by 50%; however, with the aging of the three existing units, the new addition would actually serve to maintain the current level of output over the course of the next 20 to 25 years, according to Warner.
Warner later described to NewsLanc the value this particular waste processing operation: “If we didn’t have waste energy, our landfill that…is going to last until 2019 would have been full in 2001. So it’s lasting 19 years because we have this waste energy.” According to the waste authority website, every ten truckloads of waste brought in to the plant results in only one truckload of ash for the landfill.
The waste authority director was happy to announce that Lancaster County currently demonstrates a 38% recycling rate among its municipal waste. But, in the next decade, Warner hopes to see that rate further improve with future efforts to recycle “institutional food waste” through local composting operations.
“It doesn’t mean the waste authority has to build a food composting facility,” Warner told NewsLanc, noting that private enterprises—such as the Oregon Dairy-based Terra-Gro—can collect and process organic waste from large institutions like retirement communities or universities. “We want to help them direct business to their facility, which would help us achieve our goals,” Warner said.
According to recycling manager Thomas Adams, “We’re starting to see private industry pop up that’s very skilled and has the knowledge to be able to compost food waste and mix it in, typically, with animal manures and so forth.”
