Solid Waste Members Again Eye Transfer Station At the Landfill

The December 17 Special Meeting of the Pocahontas County Solid Waste Authority (SWA,) began with a questionable motion to go into an Executive Session with Jacob and Malinda Meck, the owners of Allegheny Disposal LLC, allowed to attend. Among those not allowed to attend the closed session were Pocahontas County Commission President John Rebinski, and Marlinton Mayor Sam Felton, both of whom seemed to be upset about being excluded from such an important Executive Session. Rebinski and Felton both left the courthouse before the SWA called the meeting back into open session.

Being questionable, or not, the Executive Session did seem to be very productive. When the meeting returned to open session after about an hour, both the SWA members and the Mecks were all smiles.

Several very significant motions were then passed. The first one was to deny Allegheny Disposal’s application for a Certificate of Site Approval, although Jacob Meck did not seem upset by this. Meck had filed that application which would have allowed his company to handle the SWA’s solid waste at the proposed transfer station his company had been planning to build in Green Bank. Following this closed session, however, it became apparent that a Transfer Station in Green Bank is no longer being planned.

The next two motions passed by the SWA were to keep their already existing Commercial Solid Waste Facility Siting plan and their already existing Comprehensive Litter and Solid Waste Control Plan. Both of those, originally approved by the SWA last fall, would have needed to be withdrawn and new ones submitted if the SWA still intended to use Meck’s Transfer Station in Green Bank. Both of these currently pending plans are for locating a transfer station at the county landfill. The passage of those motions indicated beyond a doubt that as a result of the discussions during the executive Session, the current plan is to build a transfer station at the landfill. Who will build and/or operate that transfer station remains unclear at this time.

They next passed a motion to form a committee to consider establishing a public/private partnership between the SWA and Allegheny Disposal LLC. They also appointed SWA Member David McLaughlin and Mary Clendenen, the SWA’s Office Administrator, to serve on that committee. Immediately after approving those motions, they adjourned the meeting.

The following day we spoke with Jacob Meck, who said he was pleased and a little surprised about the positive discussions that occurred during the closed session, and about the motions the SWA subsequently approved after returning to open session. He sees these as steps towards having a transfer station eventually built and operating at the most logical location for one – the county landfill. He confirmed that the details of who will build and operate it remain uncertain. He said he remains worried about whether there will be enough time to obtain all the needed permits, to build the transfer station and to have it operational before the landfill closes next October. Meck expects to be asked for his input by the new committee. Meck also hopes that the SWA now sticks to this plan.