Barging of Waste may be Exiting its Incipiency
For big landfill operators with access to navigable waters, importing trash on barges may be becoming something of a growth industry, according to a waste-industry analyst.
Barging garbage is beginning to look like a viable option. Reason: the anticipated opening of the New York garbage market and the potential that much of that waste will be sent great distances, according to the waste-industry source. He explained that barging garbage makes more sense than moving it on tractor trailers that must travel busy corridors.
Virginia landfill operators hope to develop the James and York rivers as new transportation routes for out-of-state garbage as they compete for the lucrative New York City refuse-disposal business.
According to the regional engineering manager for Waste Management of Virginia, his company would receive three barges biweekly from New York City. They would berth at a barge port the company wants to build on a 10-acre tract now next to the St. Laurent (Va.) paper mill on the Pamunkey River. Each barge would carry 5000 tons of waste and recyclables in 250 sealed containers. The unloaded containers of waste would be trucked to Waste Management's landfill in Gloucester County, requiring 60 round trips a day, said WMI's regional manager. Waste paper would ship next door to St. Laurent. Aluminum would go to Richmond, according to WMI's manager.
(Waste Management Inc. is one of three finalists in the competition to haul nearly 12,000 tons of residential trash a day when New York City closes its principal landfill. The others are USA Waste Services Inc., and Browning-Ferris Industries Inc. All have landfills in Virginia.)
USA Waste has imported out-of-state trash to its Charles City County landfill for more than a year on barges carrying 40-foot-long garbage-filled containers. The barges unload their containers at a James River barge port that the company leases at the historic Shirley Plantation. The containers then trans-ship by truck to a USA landfill about 12 miles distant.
The Charles City County's barge port developer is modifying a previously rejected proposal to expand the barge port at Shirley. The new proposal before the Board of Supervisors limits hours and restricts traffic. Trucking between the port and landfill would be restricted to the hours of 5:30 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. on weekdays and 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturdays. In these periods, 150 to 350 trucks would move, depending on improvements to the port's dirt access road. However, port operations could eventually expand to around the clock, seven days a week if the noise and odors from the operation remain unobtrusive..
The interest in hauling trash by barge has instigated legislators in the Virginia General Assembly to write four bills to regulate or ban barge transportation of wastes. Also they have crafted three joint resolutions that urge the Congress to give states the power to control the importation of wastes into their jurisdictions.
Industry sources say trucks haul all but about 5 million tons of the 24 million tons of garbage moving between states each year in the U.S. About 3-million tons move by rail and less than 2 million tons moves by barge or ship.
The previous article derives from a report appearing in the February 8 edition of the Richmond Times-Dispatch by Lawrence Latané III and Andrew Petkofsky