WM-Geneva could be transfer station if zoning issue denied

By MARGIE TRAX PAGE - Staff Writer - mtrax@starbeacon.com
Star Beacon

May 01, 2008 11:52 pm

— GENEVA TOWNSHIP — As many as 100 green trucks travel through Geneva Township every day, rumbling and bumping their way down Tuttle Road.
The sound puts township residents and landfill neighbors Jan and Gene Moeller’s teeth on edge, and the last thing they want is more truck traffic through the township.
More traffic may be on the way if Waste Management-Geneva Landfill if the rezoning for a proposed 230-acre eight-phase 75-year landfill expansion is not approved.
“Yes, Waste Management would consider turning the landfill into a transfer station, and yes, that would increase traffic down Tuttle Road,” landfill site manager Evan Jahn said.
A transfer station is a building where smaller WM garbage trucks would deposit solid waste into bigger trucks. The bigger trucks then would haul the waste to the closest landfill, WM reports.
“So you are looking at increased traffic down Tuttle Road with the 100 smaller trucks, plus the larger trucks,” Jahn said.
The Moellers say the Geneva Township trustees could overturn the township zoning commission’s recommendation to rezone the land, putting the landfill on a seven-year plan for closing, all while preventing the possibility of a transfer station.
“It is all in the zoning,” Jan Moeller said. “Waste Management operates under a conditional use permit. If the construction of a transfer station isn’t an allowable use under the zoning code, the trustees could conceivably, put a stop to the threat of more traffic.”
“(The trustees) and Waste Management make it sound like it has to be one or the other, an expansion or a transfer station, when it doesn’t have to be either one,” she said.
Trustee Bob Russell said he feels shutting down the landfill would threaten the economical viability of the county, but also asked Jahn what WM would do with the 230 acres of vacant land.
“I suppose it would just stay as it is now,” Jahn said.
Russell said he is also concerned about the possibility of out-of state garbage coming into the county, the landfill’s hours of operation and response to air-quality complaints, but is intrigued by WM’s consideration of free garbage pickup for all township residents and possible free curbside recycling.