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Members of the Halifax County Service Authority (HCSA), with one member absent, voted unanimously this Monday to request that the Halifax County Board of Supervisors honor its commitment to pay tipping fees for sludge disposal at the Mecklenburg County regional landfill. The vote followed a closed session meeting of Authority members.
The HCSA points out that the county made a commitment to accept the Town’s solid waste, specifically including wastewater sludge, back in a 2000 Memorandum of Understanding with the Town of South Boston. That agreement was made at the time of the closing of the South Boston landfill, which was operated jointly by the County and the Town from 2000 until Dec. 31, 2007.
The problem stems from tipping fees for sludge which are currently being charged and which have been in force since January 1, 2008 at the newly opened joint landfill in Boydton. According to a press release made public yesterday, those unexpected fees will approximate some $100,000 annually. Halifax County absorbs all other tipping fees charged for other solid waste from Halifax, South Boston and the other towns in the county. (The $100,000 fee does not include transportation costs to the Mecklenburg landfill.)
Authority members point out that during the multiyear period that the County and the Town jointly operated the Town’s landfill, the County received $2,052,773 more than it paid for personnel and equipment it provided, and using the landfill jointly saved the County some $8 million in landfill cost avoidance. This, Authority members say, meant that the county benefited by more than $10 million from the joint operation.
After signing the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) back in 2000, two changes occurred in the handling of liquid and solid waste, the HCSA statement noted. First, instead of constructing its own landfill, Halifax County decided to join with two other counties to create a new regional landfill in Mecklenburg County and secondly, the County and the two towns of Halifax and South Boston came together to create the Halifax County Service Authority. At that time of the creation of the service authority and for the following six month period, no mention was made by the County that the HCSA would have to bear the cost of tipping fees for the deposit of the sludge. Nor did the proposed budget for the Authority include any money for sludge tipping fees. Meanwhile tipping fees from the closed South Boston landfill continued to be received and deposited by the County.
“The present is an especially good time for the County to honor its responsibilities under the MOU,” Authority members said in a written statement provided to this newspaper by Vice-Chairman Rick Harrell.
The HCSA is asking the Board of Supervisors to join with the Town of South Boston to create compost by combining the sludge with “green waste” generated by County residents who have no location to deposit yard waste, shrubs or brush. Composting has been done successfully in other parts of the state and creation of new compost would eliminate the problem of the sludge tipping fees, while at the same time creating some revenue which might offset some of the costs.
HCSA vice chairman Harrell said he hopes Supervisors will consider the Authority’s request at their upcoming September meeting.
County Administrator Bryan Foster noted that County Supervisors are pursuing the idea of composting green waste although those efforts will have to be permitted by the state.
“It’s a matter of working out all the details and answering all the questions before we could get a permit. That could take up to two years to complete,” Foster said.