Waco, Texas, tasks SCS Engineers with development of new transfer station

As part of a greater effort to build a new landfill, the city of Waco, Texas, has recently approved a $316,000 contract with SCS Engineers to plan and develop a transfer station.

As reported by the Waco Tribune-Herald, the Long Beach, California-based engineering firm will be in charge of permitting and preliminary designs for the transfer station, which will be located at University Parks Drive and Raddle Road in Axtell—just a few minutes away from the planned landfill site.

The city has already spent close to $6.5 million on the overall project, purchasing a total of 1,426 acres for the new landfill site, with 502 acres being for the landfill itself and the rest for a buffer zone.

Despite land acquisition costs, officials say the addition of the transfer station would be the driving factor in increasing residential trash bills by as much as 84 percent.

The new transfer station likely will be active sometime in the next two to four years, Solid Waste Services Director Kody Petillo told the Waco Tribune-Herald. It will be built at the site of an old city landfill, outside city limits but in the city’s extraterritorial jurisdiction, which closed in the 1980s.

The transfer station would consist of an enclosed building with a tipping concrete floor and a trash compactor that will serve as a place for city trash trucks to drop off solid waste. From there, workers will compact the trash and haul it to the Axtell site with 18-wheelers.

While the transfer station represents a major upfront and ongoing cost, city officials say it is more cost-effective than sending trash trucks from their collection routes in town out to the landfill.

“It’s just more cost-effective operationally to have a transfer station, which reduces the amount of long-haul trash,” Petillo says, adding that about three trash trucks’ worth of compacted trash can fit onto one semi. “We’ll have less traffic, less mileage, and fewer carbon emissions by reducing our overall haul.”

Petillo says the city’s current landfill, located off Old Lorena Road, has enough capacity to last until at least January 2025, according to city estimates.