It will take approximately two months for the site selection process on a proposed solid waste transfer station to be completed, the engineer who will do that work said tonight.

“The first process is to select a site,” William Dreitzler, North Carolina operations and technical manager for ms consultants told council tonight. “It’s a lot more than an arbitrary process. It’s a structured process.”

The engineering firm will use a weighted matrix formula to select the best site for the station, he told council at its work session. That means each factor will be given different points from three categories: Engineering, environmental and institutional criteria.

The engineering criteria looks at factors for long-term operation, the environmental criteria looks at the permitting process and institutional criteria involves factors the city thinks is important, such as the facility closeness to communities, schools and churches and available land.

“From my experience it gives you a pretty good basis,” Dreitzler said. “My intention is to use 10 to 20 sites.”

He would then pair that down to two or three and the final sites would be reexamined using the same criteria. One of the most important factors is transportation. The city would want the facility close to major highways, he said. “It all centers around the criteria we use and how we weight the criteria to drive or keep us away from locations we find undesirable. It’s a very structured process that allows you to know we went through a very structured process.”

Councilman Ernest Bobbitt asked how much weight should be given to a site which the city owns, which is a factor because the city owns land it is considering building the transfer station on.

“I think that would be valid criteria,” Dreitzler said. “I think city owned property would be a valid criteria and certainly save money.”

Mayor Emery Doughtie said keeping costs down is important to the city. “We know we’re going to have to borrow funds to build. Anything to keep the costs down, we’re trying to do something positive that will be a positive income generator.”

Dreitzler said once the best sites are known there will be more investigations. “There could be sites just as good as the other. Sometimes it will be a no win situation. It’s important to have a structured process to defend your decision.”

Dreitzler said in a 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.