ms consultants was chosen as the engineering firm to begin studies to see where a proposed solid waste transfer station will be built.
The engineering firm will do site selection, preliminary design work and final design of the site, according to a letter from William Dreitzler, North Carolina operations and technical manager for the company.
The letter notes the company proposes to complete the site selection phase within 45 days of the notice to begin. “This schedule will need to be reevaluated once a specific scope and number of sites has been determined. Once a site has been selected and a preliminary layout approved by the city, ms will complete the (North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources) permit package within 45 days and the complete building design package within 75 days.”
City Manager Paul Sabiston told council he expects the preliminary design phase and site selection to cost between $10,000 to $12,000. “We can do the design without having a site selected.”
Sabiston said the city continues to speak with the county on the matter and the county is interested. “We still have that door open to talk with them.”
Dreitzler said in his July 30 letter to Public Works Director Richard Parnell the firm will provide architectural, structural, mechanical, electrical, plumbing civil, site and surveying  work for the city. “It is our understanding that the city requires a design which will accommodate a waste stream of 100 tons per day with the ability to expand the waste stream to 200 (tons per day).”
Parnell has said there are three or four sites the engineers will consider.
They include the old landfill site at Deep Creek Road, a site across from public works which housed the old dog pound and a piece of land next to Halifax Linen which has since been sold.The city has had private citizens offer it land.
Each of the sites have plusses and minuses, Parnell said in May, including the one the city is currently looking at, land at the public works building on Hinson Street, which residents in the Lincoln Heights and South Rosemary communities have objected to.
The latest revenue projections for the approximately $695,000 project show with a transfer station the city could see operating revenues over expenses of $282,814. Without a station that figure would be $180,742.
The projections are based on 28,000 tons per year with 7,200 coming from the city’s own solid waste and debris.
Financing options have also changed since the matter was first discussed, Sabiston has said, with debt service being calculated on financing $700,000 over 20 years at an estimated percentage rate of 3.05 percent.
Financing for 20 years instead of 10 years contained in earlier documents would mean an annual debt service of $47,268.66.
A transfer station is a facility where residential and commercial solid waste may be delivered and then transferred by independent haulers to a landfill.
The city’s own collection trucks and third party commercial haulers which pick up solid waste or choose to bring it from other areas will be the primary users, an earlier memo says.
Preliminary studies by the state Department of Transportation show Hinson Street, where the proposed station would be located, would not have to be improved if 100,000 tons a year were transported on it.