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County approves $13 million resource authority expansion





A planned $13.25 million expansion of the Resource Authority of Sumner County’s transfer station in Gallatin will alleviate traffic and capacity issues at the facility, according to officials.FILE

A planned $13.25 million expansion of the Resource Authority of Sumner County’s transfer station in Gallatin will alleviate traffic and capacity issues at the facility, according to officials.FILE

A $13 million expansion the Resource Authority of Sumner County’s transfer station in Gallatin has been approved by county leaders.

The Sumner County Commission voted 14-8 last week in favor of borrowing up to $13.25 million for the project, which officials say will alleviate traffic and capacity issues at the facility.

“We’re getting about double the volume of trash we had 10 years ago with the same amount of space,” Sumner County Commissioner and resource authority board member Baker Ring said prior to the vote on Oct. 18. “We’ve been dealing with this for a couple of years now trying to come up with some ways to solve these problems, and this was the way that we felt was going to be able to (do that).”

The existing transfer station, which opened in 1991, is rated to receive 350 tons of trash per day, according to a report from Murfreesboro-based engineering and environmental consulting firm Griggs & Maloney. However, the facility took in between 600 tons and 700 tons of trash on its busiest days last year.

As part of the project, a new transfer station with a 500 ton per day rating would be built. There would also be improvements to the current facility, which would only be used to serve residential customers while all commercial and industrial customers would use the new expansion once it was completed.

Portland resident Caleb Moss, who runs a junk removal service, told county leaders last week there are several days a week he has to wait in line for an hour or longer to use the transfer station.

“When you’ve got so much traffic coming in, you’ve got that same traffic coming out in one line,” Moss said about the layout of the facility. “Once the outbound scale backs up, it bottlenecks everything into one area, and you can’t go in or out.”

Commissioner: ‘Throwing money’ at issues is not the best solution

Sumner County Commissioner Jeremy Mansfield, who voted against borrowing money for the project, said he feels the issues could largely be addressed by making some operational improvements at the facility.

He suggested a scaling back the overall size of the expansion, adding more scales, implementing remote ticketing to speed up the payment process and charging out-of-county haulers more or banning them altogether.

“When I see things that aren’t happening in an efficient manner, throwing money at it to expand it is not the best thing in my opinion when there are other ways to do it… at a much dramatically lower cost,” Mansfield said.

Prior to their vote, commissioners also heard from Tyree Springs Road resident Sean Keene who said he has been a resource authority customer for nearly 30 years. In recent months, he noted that many vehicles he saw while waiting in line had license plates from Davidson County and “were not hauling construction waste.”

In August, RASCO officials told county leaders that they estimated as much as 20 percent of users came from outside Sumner County.

“Unfortunately, we’re not addressing our growth, we’re addressing other people’s growth and we’re on the hook for paying for it,” Mansfield said last week. “If at the end of the day the resource authority can’t pay (for the bond), we’re going to have to pay that out of our funds as taxpayers.”

County, Gallatin and Hendersonville to pay if resource authority defaults on debt

As part of an interlocal agreement between the county, resource authority and the cities of Gallatin and Hendersonville, the resource authority would be responsible for making the annual payment on the debt for the 20-year term of the bond.

In the event of a shortfall, the county would be responsible for approximately 42.8 percent of the remaining cost while the two cities would each be responsible for approximately 28.6 percent.

When asked about the resource authority’s ability to pay off the debt, Sumner County Finance Director David Lawing again said last week that while “nothing is guaranteed,” long-term revenue projections looked “very reasonable and conservative as far as being able to pay the cost.”

“This is not an idea that we’ve just come up with last month,” Sumner County Commissioner and RASCO board member Billy Geminden said. “We’ve been working on this for over a year.”

Design and permitting for the expansion are expected to take place within a year, according to the report from Griggs & Maloney. Construction is estimated to be completed during the 2022-23 fiscal year.

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