RI County panel rejects need for Moline waste transfer station

The Rock Island County Waste Management Agency Board (RICWMA) passed a resolution on Wednesday, April 26, effectively recommending against locating a $15 million waste transfer station in Moline because board members said the county doesn’t need it.  Leading the RICWMA panel’s opposition was East Moline Alderwoman Rhea Oakes who said the county already has sufficient landfill capacity for many years and as a result, adding a new facility doesn’t fit with the county’s recently updated waste management plan. RICWMA members attending the special meeting in the Rock Island County Office Building voted without dissent not to recommend the 5,000-square-foot, self-contained staging and recycling center. Lakeshore Recycling Systems (LRS) has proposed the facility at a site west of Group O on 10 acres located at 47th Street and 78th Avenue.  Where the project goes now will depend on whether the City of Moline will continue to pursue a permit for the facility through the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. Moline has the ultimate authority to move forward and must hold at least one or more public hearings as part of the Pollution Control Board siting process, according to Denise Bulat, executive director of the Bistate Regional Commission. Moline City Administrator Bob Vitas told the QCBJ Thursday: "The city will continue to follow the legal process that is well established to site the proposed transfer station.  We will continue to remain neutral during the process leading up to the hearings later this year.  Following the hearings the city council will weigh the information from the hearings and make a determination. Until that time, no final decision will be made in advance of completion of the process." That process is likely to take months to complete, according to the city’s original timetable. In February, Moline officials announced they were making progress in the effort to welcome the waste and material transfer station to its still-empty industrial park created in 2011 as part of a tax increment financing (TIF) district south of the Quad Cities International Airport (QCIA). The project was presented to the RICWMA in January. Benefits that city leaders have touted for the facility include: increased competition in the local waste management marketplace, new construction and permanent jobs, and helping Moline reduce the debt it has incurred on a TIF 7 district, which has not delivered any development dollars in more than a decade of existence. Area cities were said to privately oppose the project.  Two of those opponents, East Moline Mayor Reggie Freeman and City Administrator Doug Maxeiner, attended the Wednesday meeting to go on record against the Moline transfer station. In addition to a letter from the mayor urging RICWMA to reject the facility, Mr. Maxeiner also emphasized that the county has ample landfill capacity so the new transit station does not fit a Rock Island County waste management plan that was updated less than a year ago. Representatives of the county’s two existing landfills – Matthew Pivit of Republic Services and Dominic Remmes of Waste Connections – echoed the East Moline leaders’ claims. They argued that there already is enough landfill space available to take Rock Island County into the next century. Republic alone has projected an 11-year life expectancy on its existing landfill and has acquired enough land to serve the landfill for an additional 85 years, Mr. Pivit said. Millennium also has 35 years of landfill capacity left, Mr. Remmes said, and he disputed a claim by the LRS representative that the application for the project contained 150 pages of evidence that proved the facility was needed and is consistent with the waste management plan. Mr. Remmes argued, however, that the application’s evidence “doesn’t pass the smell test.” Before Wednesday’s vote, the project had been moving through the steps needed for approval. The land for the proposed state-of-the-art project is owned by the Metropolitan Airport Authority (MAA) of Rock Island County. The MAA board of commissioners, which oversees the QCIA, unanimously approved a land lease agreement at its Jan. 17 meeting with LRS for an indoor, non-hazardous solid waste transfer facility. Moline officials said previously the new transfer station will help reduce the city’s TIF debt on the airport area industrial park that has not generated any tax increment since its creation as well as help spark new development there. The LRS deal also would restore two of four recycling drop offs that were closed in 2021 due to funding issues. Demand was especially high for an electronic recycling center on the Illinois side so that Rock Island County residents would no longer have to take e-waste across the river to Scott County. It also will mean new jobs, Moline leaders said.  Additional advantages, the city said, could include reducing wear and tear on Moline garbage and recycling collection vehicles, helping control garbage rates, and extending the useful life of area landfills. LRS at a glance:

• Lakeshore Recycling Systems is a Rosemont, Illinois-based company that runs closed-loop waste and recycling centers in nine Midwest states including in the Quad Cities region.
• It boasts revenues of more than $350 million a year, has an employee base of nearly 1,500 and an asset base of 34 facilities, according to the publication Waste Today.
• A transfer station is an enclosed building where municipal waste, recyclables and landscape waste are taken by waste collection trucks to be consolidated onto larger and more efficient semi-trailers for transportation to a final destination.