Transfer Station

Maybe a waste transfer station is warranted in the Joppa area where Harford County government is proposing one, or maybe such an operation should be left to someone else to devise. Envisioned for the old Coleman Plecker's World of Golf site on Route 7 near the Route 152 intersection, a waste transfer station could well turn out to be an eyesore at such a spot. The roads in the area are well traveled and the property in question, which the county purchased for $2.9 million, is hardly secluded.

Editor: On Sept. 12, 2011 the Administration of Harford County dropped a bombshell in Joppa with news of a plan to dump, then transport all the county's trash here on a two-lane Route 7 facility. Councilman Dion Guthrie has successfully led the outrage of the Joppa citizens against the use of this poorly situated and overly expensive site. The Plecker property was bought by the county after it sat idle and for sale for years with no takers. With no appraisal, top dollar was paid.

Editor: Please consider printing my letter to the editor. Although I am a resident of Jarrettsville, I have been following with great interest the coverage of the proposed transport station for Route 7 in Joppa. I travel daily on this road and heartily agree with the residents who say that this road cannot handle any more traffic. Traveling Route 7 has always been a much more pleasurable drive than taking I-95. Why can't it remain a scenic alternative to the busier highways of Route 40 and I-95?

Editor: An article in The Aegis Oct. 3 entitled "Trucking trash out is pushed" missed a very important part of the meeting. In the paragraph "As for what would happen to the Route 7 former-Plecker property, Guthrie said in September when addressing the Bush River Community Council, it would likely end up being converted for use as a waste transfer station for use by individual county residents rather than by waste hauling firms. " The reaction from the people attending the Joppa-Joppatowne meeting was very much opposed to any sort of transfer station.

Editor: I wanted to let you know that I am very concerned about the proposal to locate a Waste Transfer Facility in the 800 block of Philadelphia Road in Joppa. Numerous people living near the site have written to me expressing their concern and at times their outrage over the facility being placed in this location. They are worried about how so many large trash trucks coming and going will safely navigate that section of Philadelphia Road which is already very busy. They are concerned about noise, dust and potential contamination. Of course they are afraid their property values will plummet.  I couldn't state more strongly that their concerns must be addressed and their questions answered to the fullest. One family who owns a home and property next to the proposed site has lived in their home for over 50 years. The couple says they are heartbroken to think they must spend their retirement years dealing with all the problems they anticipate will come with a trash facility located so close to their home.

Two Harford County Council members are calling for a state investigator to examine circumstances surrounding the proposed transfer station in Joppa, including the county's move away from the waste to energy facility at Aberdeen Proving Ground. At Tuesday's Harford County Council meeting, Councilmen Dion Guthrie and Joe Woods defended their comments to The Aegis last week that Aberdeen Proving Ground garrison commander Col. Orlando Ortiz said it was the county that pulled out of a waste disposal agreement, not APG. Woods said he went into last week's meeting with Guthrie and Ortiz fully prepared to accuse the Army of not being a good neighbor, only to find out it was the county that was not a good neighbor.

Attorneys for opponents of a proposed trash transfer station in Elkridge called their last witness last night, ending the testimony phase of a three-year dispute.Only the attorneys will be allowed to speak before the Zoning Board at a hearing scheduled tomorrow.On July 17, attorneys will make their closing arguments, said Howard County Councilman Darrel E. Drown, chairman of the Zoning Board. If more time is needed, a decision in the case will hold until September, when the council returns from its recess, Drown said.

Developer Arnold Sagner makes no bones about his opposition to a Browning-Ferris Industries trash transfer station on Route 1 in Elkridge. Such a facility, he believes, would ruin his plans to develop an industrial park on land adjacent to the BFI site. He could be right about that, as well as the idea that hurting his plans affects industrial development in Howard County as a whole.Mr. Sagner also contends that if the county allows BFI to controlthe lucrative business of shipping local trash outside the state, the county stands to lose millions of dollars in potential revenue.

It's a perennial problem: What to do with Howard County's growing mountain of trash.As county public works officials prepare next year's budget, they once again are considering a trash collection site in Marriottsville, an alternative to private haulers and leaky local landfills.If County Executive Charles I. Ecker agrees, the county would build its own waste-transfer station at the Alpha Ridge Landfill, providing a site for collection trucks to dump their loads en route to out-of-town landfills or incinerators.

The long-running debate over a garbage transfer station in Elkridge will run a little longer -- after two county land-use panels recently postponed decisions on the controversial project.The case will not be decided until at least Jan. 8.Browning-Ferris Inc. wants to build the 17-acre transfer station off U.S. 1 near Cemetery Lane. Some residents and businesses in the area do not want it.BFI is seeking a positive recommendation from the county Planning Board and, ultimately, final approval from the Zoning Board.

The state, city and CSX Transportation have tentatively selected the Mount Clare train yard in Southwest Baltimore for a roughly $90 million facility where containerized cargo would be transferred from trucks to trains, a project designed to improve the Port of Baltimore's efficiency. The project would help the port and CSX by allowing the railroad to bypass the more than century-old Howard Street Tunnel, which is too low for passage of trains with containers stacked two high. Such double-stacking of truck-sized shipping containers is the most cost-effective way to move them by rail.

Two Harford County Council members are calling for a state investigator to examine circumstances surrounding the proposed transfer station in Joppa, including the county's move away from the waste to energy facility at Aberdeen Proving Ground. At Tuesday's Harford County Council meeting, Councilmen Dion Guthrie and Joe Woods defended their comments to The Aegis last week that Aberdeen Proving Ground garrison commander Col. Orlando Ortiz said it was the county that pulled out of a waste disposal agreement, not APG. Woods said he went into last week's meeting with Guthrie and Ortiz fully prepared to accuse the Army of not being a good neighbor, only to find out it was the county that was not a good neighbor.

Editor: I wanted to let you know that I am very concerned about the proposal to locate a Waste Transfer Facility in the 800 block of Philadelphia Road in Joppa. Numerous people living near the site have written to me expressing their concern and at times their outrage over the facility being placed in this location. They are worried about how so many large trash trucks coming and going will safely navigate that section of Philadelphia Road which is already very busy. They are concerned about noise, dust and potential contamination. Of course they are afraid their property values will plummet.  I couldn't state more strongly that their concerns must be addressed and their questions answered to the fullest. One family who owns a home and property next to the proposed site has lived in their home for over 50 years. The couple says they are heartbroken to think they must spend their retirement years dealing with all the problems they anticipate will come with a trash facility located so close to their home.

Editor: Please consider printing my letter to the editor. Although I am a resident of Jarrettsville, I have been following with great interest the coverage of the proposed transport station for Route 7 in Joppa. I travel daily on this road and heartily agree with the residents who say that this road cannot handle any more traffic. Traveling Route 7 has always been a much more pleasurable drive than taking I-95. Why can't it remain a scenic alternative to the busier highways of Route 40 and I-95?

In all the commotion over issues with the planned trash transfer station in Joppa and the related matter of the status of the waste to energy plant on the Edgewood Area of Aberdeen Proving Ground, a key detail sometimes gets lost: Two members of the Harford County Council are responsible for most of the critical questions on the subject. Though it seems inconsequential enough, the reality is this kind of divide was predicted when the county charter was amended years ago so as to do away with all the county council members having to face all of the county's voters.

Possibly overshadowed by the passage Tuesday night of county waste transfer station regulations was the suggestion that a second site for such an operation could be available. As an aside, it is a bit difficult to understand why the administration of Harford County Executive David R. Craig and the members of the Harford County Council have suddenly been so vigilant in putting together a plan for a trash transfer station. There are certainly reasons why one may be needed, but more about that presently.

The owner of a new, privately held landfill in rural Virginia is seeking approval to build a transfer station near Laurel that would compete directly with Maryland's publicly owned trash facilities.Garnet Inc. has proposed using a 32-acre plot in the shadow of the Maryland Reformatory for Women to channel trash collected in the mid-Atlantic region to its landfill 70 miles south of Washington.Some of the 3,000 to 5,000 tons of trash that would pass through the station each day also could be sent to an incinerator in Lorton, Va., Garnet Vice President Blake R. Van Leer II said last week.

The following letter was addressed to members of the Harford County Council. A copy was provided for publication. We attended Tuesday night's public hearing, and left before the meeting started. After reading about the passage of Bill 11-62 without County Councilman Dion Guthrie's amendment approved, we are very disappointed to say the least. We do not believe that a 500-foot buffer was too much to ask. We hope that the community in which you live is never faced with the possibility of a transfer station such as we might be faced with here in Joppa.

Editor: Next Tuesday, Jan. 10, at 7 p.m. at the Harford County Board of Education building at 102 S. Hickory Ave. in Bel Air, the public hearing for the Solid Waste Transfer Station Bill 11-62 will be held by the County Council. This is a bill to make the County government inform the people that a solid waste transfer station is coming to their neighborhood. It details what sort of trash it will take, where the trash will be taken, how large a facility it will be, and how many trucks will be cruising your neighborhood.