Traverse City Record-Eagle

Garfield Township

June 11, 2010

'Archaic' rules may put kibosh on facility

BY BRIAN McGILLIVARY bmcgillivary@record-eagle.com

TRAVERSE CITY — Grand Traverse County's solid waste guidelines, considered by critics as outdated and "archaic," may block a company from using a closed manufacturing plant to recycle material that currently goes to landfills.

American Recycling of Michigan, a subsidiary of Kalkaska-based American Waste, wants to develop a state-of-the-art transfer station and material recycling facility in Tower Automotive's former plant off Hughes Drive in Garfield Township.

The proposed $10 million facility would employ 50 people and process up to 500 cubic yards a day of regular trash, commercial and residential recycling materials, and construction debris.

"It's good for the environment, it's good for the economy, and there's no downside to it," said Garfield Township Supervisor Chuck Korn, a member of the facility siting committee. "If this doesn't happen it would be a travesty."

And it may not happen. The county's solid waste plan, adopted in 1999, requires the facility to be sited as if it was a landfill and requires identical minimum standards for distance from wetlands and water.

Bob Osterhout, the county's resource recovery manager, determined the project doesn't meet those standards. The facility would be too close to a 100-foot setback for wetlands, a creek and a flood plain, and falls within 300 feet of a school, he said.

But Joseph Quandt, American Recycling's attorney, said the county's solid waste plan is based on a decades-old state template and carries with it "unintended consequences."

"There certainly is a need for the county to amend its solid waste plan," Quandt said. "There are a lot of issues that need to be addressed, and this is just one of them."

A county committee spent three years and $140,000 to rewrite the solid waste plan in mid-decade. But the county board in 2007 rejected the document, reversed course and approved it, then put it on a shelf without taking necessary steps to activate the plan.

Local attorney Scott Howard chaired a committee that updated the plan that stalled in the county board's hands. The committee's final product would have simplified the process to approve American Recycle's proposal, he said.

Howard since was hired as the county's Board of Public Works lawyer, and he'll be asked to interpret and potentially defend a solid waste plan he tried to replace.

Quandt contends Osterhout should have measured setbacks differently at the Tower plant site, and said state law gives the county discretion to approve the site even if it doesn't meet all the minimum standards.

Osterhout said state regulators disagreed, and told him he could not interpret siting criteria differently because American's project is not a landfill.

Howard said he'll review Quandt's position and have a recommendation for the BPW before it meets June 28 to vote on the recommendation. The application then goes to the DNRE for final approval.

"It is really a great project for redevelopment of that property," Quandt said. "Really, we just have this one glitch."

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