If the Delaware County Jail were to grow any larger, the county’s transfer station at 888 U.S. 42 North may have to relocate.
Tiffany Jenkins, director for sanitary engineering for the county, discussed the possibility at a recent joint meeting of Delaware City Council and county commissioners. The transfer station is where the city’s trash is temporarily deposited before it is hauled off to a landfill.
“The existing site is next to the jail. Eventually, the jail site is going to need to expand, because the only direction the jail can expand is onto the transfer station property,” Jenkins said. “Long-term, I have no idea when, whenever the jail expands, the transfer station will need to move or go away.”
Jenkins said the long-term options are to continue to run the station as it is; have the county build a new site somewhere else; have the city run the transfer station; or to have the county get out of the trash business and let the city and private entities decide what to do.
County Administrator Tim Hansley said the city was the largest single customer at the transfer station, and that’s why council needs to be a partner in any discussion.
Council member Joe DiGenova suggested forming an ad hoc committee to further discuss the topic.
“We have an obligation to our constituents to pick up the trash,” DiGenova said.
“It could be more feasible to contract trash out than to talk about taking over the operations of a transfer station,” council member Lisa Keller said.
“I have always been an advocate for the transfer station as it is to facilitate those who were using it,” said Commissioner Ken O’Brien.
“It is an issue that is more regional than just city,” said City Manager Tom Homan.
Officials said that zoning might make it difficult to relocate the transfer station to a different township in the county.
The county’s transfer station is operated by Grove City-based Central Ohio Contractors. The Delaware Knox Marion Morrow (DKMM) Solid Waste District collects a $6 per ton tipping fee on municipal solid waste generated in the district from landfill and transfer station operators. The DKMM’s board of directors are the 12 commissioners from the four counties.
Hansley said there may be enough land further back on the property to build a second transfer station, away from the jail.
“There is an advantage to not moving it,” O’Brien said, citing Environmental Protection Agency regulations.
Sheriff Russell L. Martin, who was contacted after the meeting, said that he and Jenkins “have had some casual conversations about the future of the jail and the transfer station, and what might need to happen if there became a need to expand the jail in the future.”
“I don’t anticipate the jail needing to expand anytime real soon,” O’Brien said during the joint meeting.
Jenkins also said there would be some construction at the station’s tip floor (where trash is tipped out) in the late summer, but the facility would still receive city trash.
