The Horry County Solid Waste Authority (SWA) will be shipping more construction and demolition trash out of the county in the coming months to meet requirements of Horry County Council.
When the SWA received council permission to change its budget in order to process recyclables from Charleston County, Horry County Council told the SWA that no airspace at the SWA landfill on Hwy 90 could be lost to Charleston trash.
Since the SWA landfill is the only facility in which Horry County municipal solid waste (household garbage) is disposed, council’s concern was that the full landfill capacity be saved for Horry County residents.
In approximately five years, MSW and C&D waste from Horry County will be commingled in the SWA landfill, according to SWA officials. The landfill’s available disposal volume for Horry County trash is currently projected to run out in 2042.
In order to meet council’s requirement, SWA executive director Danny Knight told council the SWA agreed to ship C&D waste, currently disposed at the SWA, out of county in an amount equal to Charleston residual trash resulting from the SWA/Charleston County recycling contract.
“We have structured a program where we (SWA) will match ton for ton, day for day, however you want to do it, we will send that much material out of our landfill to a landfill across the river,” Knight told the Horry County Infrastructure and Regulation Committee at its September 24, 2015 meeting.
SWA then board chairman Lance Thompson reiterated Knight’s statement at the same meeting, “This will be a net neutral effect. Anything that’s coming to our landfill from the direction of Charleston County, we’re going to send out (of county) the same amount of C&D…”
After an extensive study of SWA reports related to the Charleston County recyclable contract, Grand Strand Daily determined that requirement was not being met.
According to GSD analysis of SWA records, since the SWA began receiving Charleston County recyclable material in July 2015, a total of 3,035.73 tons of C&D trash had been shipped out of Horry County through January 31, 2017.
However, that same analysis revealed a total of 8,645.93 tons of residual waste resulted from the recycling process that is attributable to Charleston County trash being processed.
The conclusion drawn from the analysis is that Horry County has sent 5,610.20 tons less of C&D trash out of the county than it has taken in at the SWA landfill in residual waste from Charleston recycling through January 31, 2017.
SWA officials agreed with GSD analysis last week and said the SWA would make up the shipping shortfall of tons sent out of the county by the end of the contract with Charleston County. The contract is expected to last one more year.
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