Transfer station bid awarded

Posted 3/7/13

The Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality approved a permit for the transfer station in December.

The facility will temporarily store local trash before it’s hauled to the landfill. Earlier this year, Mayor Don Hillman and councilmen …

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Transfer station bid awarded

Posted

Construction set to begin this month

Construction of the city’s garbage transfer station is expected to begin by the end of the month.

On Monday night, the Powell City Council unanimously awarded a $804,657 bid to Filener Construction of Cody, the lowest of the five bids submitted.

Construction likely will begin this month at the North Ingalls Street site, said City Engineer Sean Christensen. He expects the transfer station will be built and operating in about six months.

The Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality approved a permit for the transfer station in December.

The facility will temporarily store local trash before it’s hauled to the landfill. Earlier this year, Mayor Don Hillman and councilmen decided to start hauling all of the city’s trash to the Cowley landfill rather than the Park County landfill in Cody. The move is estimated to save the city roughly $63,000 in landfill tipping fees this year.

The Powell landfill closed to household waste in September 2012, forcing city leaders to rethink how to handle local trash. For years, the city anticipated the landfill changes and leaders looked at ways to save costs.

Rather than directly hauling trash to the landfill with city garbage trucks, city officials have said a transfer station is the most cost effective option in the long run.

City Administrator Zane Logan said Monday that the actual total cost of the transfer station is close to what the city and engineers estimated it would be a few years ago, when planning first began.

Originally, the estimate was between $1.3 and $1.4 million. Today, that estimate stands at $1.46 million.

“Our original estimate was pretty close, especially when considering it was done a few years ago,” Logan said.

The city looked at hydraulic and electric options for the trailer so it can have its own generators and back-feed into the building. The City Sanitation Department offices will be relocated in the new transfer station building. Currently, the offices are in a building adjacent to the transfer station site.

He added that the city is doing about $40,000-$50,000 worth of in-house electrical work for the project.

“That’s a considerable savings,” Logan said.

In addition to the building costs, the project cost also includes $582,973 for the transfer station equipment — two transtor units and a transfer trailer. Trash from city garbage trucks will be unloaded into transtors. When the transtor is full, it will dump waste into a transfer trailer that will compact the trash and, when it’s at maximum capacity, haul the waste to the landfill.

Grants through the State Loan and Investment Board are covering about half of the total cost.

The city is using the value of its North Ingalls site as part of a match for the $752,502 in grants toward the roughly $1.46 million transfer station project.

From the SLIB grants, $100,000 will go toward the transfer trailer and $652,502 toward the transfer station and transtor units

The rest of the city’s share of the project and transfer trailer — roughly $711,498 — will come out of sanitation fund reserves as well as in-kind work, such as using the city’s equipment and labor toward the project.

The other four transfer station bids the city received were: $832,464 from Diamond Point Construction of Buffalo; $1,091,713.34 from S&S Builders of Gillette; $1,057,000 from Groathouse Construction of Cody; and $999,216 from Century Contractors of Idaho.

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