One of-a-kind Landfill Ready to Help McDowell County Shine

McDowell county officials celebrated the long-awaited completion Tuesday of their new 175-acre landfill and acepted their first $1 million payment on the project.

The county accepted the $1 million check from EnviroSolutions Inc. of Chantilly , Va. , which constructed a Class A landfill near the Capels community. The facility will be capable of accepting up to 50,000-tons of waste a month. It will be McDowell County 's first landfill since the old Marytown facility was closed in 1990.

“It's just another step toward economic development in our county,” County Commission President Gordon Lambert said. “The landfill will help us get our county cleaned up, and to get ready for some tourism – Hatfield and McCoy and some other things.”

Lambert said the company will make a second $1 million payment to the county when the first ton of garbage comes in. He said the required state permits for the project have been submitted to the county's Solid Waste Authority. The commission and the authority have been working on the project for the past four years.

Without an operational landfill, the majority of McDowell County 's solid waste has been shipped to Mercer County over the past decade. Lambert said as soon as final negotiations on the project are completed, the facility will be ready to open. He said the landfill is the only one of its kind in the state capable of accepting 50,000-tons of waste a month.

The commission is hoping to use the first $1 million payment as an investment.

“What we are looking to do or hope to do is invest that and put it in some type of fund to make sure we always have money set aside, and to always make sure we have money for our health (insurance) for employees,” Lambert said.

Lambert said Tuesday's program was a celebration to help “christen” the new landfill.

“We had a sit down dinner, or lunch there, and just a little celebration to kind of christen the landfill and scale house,” he said. “Everything is ready to go.”

In addition to handling all solid waste from McDowell County , the new 175-acre land-fill will accept 50,000 tons of non-toxic, household, refuse monthly. The waste will be shipped to the landfill by rail in heavily sealed oblong blocks, then trucked up to the hollow to the landfill. The facility will have a double liner and exceed all state and federal environmental standards, according to earlier reports by the commission.

--Charles Owens (Bluefield Telegraph)