Kent County, Michigan, opens new transfer station

The Kent County, Michigan, Department of Public Works (DPW) has opened its newest transfer station.

DPW leaders, county officials and community members gathered today to open the new Rockford, Michigan-based North Kent Transfer Station, which is replacing the former transfer station at the same site to meet increased recycling and disposal needs. The new facility will be fully operational in June.

As previously reported by Waste Today, DPW approved a $15.5 million budget in 2022 to construct the new transfer station. According to DPW Director Dar Baas, the organization used the remaining funds to reroof the existing facility, add a new scale house, replace an aging scale and pave areas that were initially intended to be gravel.

“There were no major issues during the construction,” Baas says. “The biggest challenge was finding a good location on the site and working with the grades and site constraints that we had.

“We were able to find room and orient the building, provide adequate staging areas and provide stormwater control features. We were blessed with a mild winter which allowed the construction season to extend longer than normal,” he adds.

The site’s previous transfer station opened in 1992 and needed to be replaced due to population and business growth in northern Kent County. The facility functions to hold municipal solid waste.

DPW says a larger facility will allow residents and commercial haulers to more easily segregate demolition and construction waste, bulky items and recycling from municipal waste. The new facility also features a Center for Hard to Recycle Materials (CHaRM) area to help improve recycling rates.

At 35,000 square feet, the new transfer station boasts a 22,000-square-foot tipping area. Baas says the additional space will allow for approximately three times the working capacity of the existing transfer station, which is 11,900 square feet.

“Sanitation and the proper handling of municipal solid waste are critical for maintaining a healthy community, and the transfer station plays a large role in ensuring efficient handling of refuse,” Baas says.