HT article : Plans for trash transfer station at JB's Salvage upset neighbors

Plans for trash transfer station at JB's Salvage upset neighbors
Proposal for facility on Vernal Pike raises concerns about truck traffic in residential area

By Laura Lane 331-4362 | llane@heraldt.com
February 5, 2013

Stewart Moon | Herald-Times

Some northwest-side Bloomington residents are upset with plans for a trash transfer station they fear will bring unwanted garbage trucks and semis barreling through their neighborhood on two-lane residential streets.
But Bethany Stevens, who owns the company that is expanding business at the JB’s Salvage site on Vernal Pike, hopes to alleviate their concerns. She does not anticipate a great increase in truck traffic, and pointed out the area already has several industrial businesses that bring trucks to and from the neighborhood.
And she hopes offering free recycling to residents who can drop off glass, metal, cardboard and other recyclables, all mixed together, will help offset worries about the transfer station.
Stevens said trash from individual households, as well as independent trash haulers, will be dumped into an 80-by-80-foot pole barn and kept there no longer than 24 hours, as the law requires. She intends to have the transfer station, Vernal Pike Transfer & Recycling, open for business this summer.
A permit application, which lists the facility’s expected daily volume of trash at 100 tons, is pending before the Indiana Department of Environmental Management. It was filed in November, and the state has 180 days to approve or deny the plan. Indiana Recycling Resource has paid the $12,150 permit processing fee.
No zoning changes or city approval are required for the project to proceed.
Carrie Winkel and others are against having a trash transfer station in the area. The Crescent Bend Neighborhood Association member has lived on West 17th Street 35 years, and said her mostly low-income neighborhood is getting dumped on.
Winkel is upset that city and county officials have signed off on the transfer station despite residents’ concerns. She said once I-69 is built and direct access to Vernal Pike from Ind. 37 is lost, trash trucks taking garbage in and semis hauling it out to area landfills will travel along residential streets, some with no sidewalks.
She said a trash transfer facility has no place in a neighborhood. “It’s that simple: A waste facility does not belong downtown,” she said. “We are right next to it.”
Bloomington Public Works Department Director Susie Johnson confirmed the city’s support for the expansion at JB’s Salvage. She said there could be issues with large trucks on less-traveled city thoroughfares once the Vernal Pike access from Ind. 37 is cut off, and that the city hopes to work with the state to help make improvements to city streets in the area.
“As we plan for I-69 and its impacts, we will take into consideration all of the industries that are served by and need access to the existing roads,” Johnson said. “We would enter into negotiations with INDOT for improvements to those roads that will take on traffic. We are talking to INDOT and lobbying to get as much as we can.”
Winkel said neighbors feel as if their concerns have been run over and that the city should take a closer look. She said trash blowing off trucks will litter the nearby B-Line Trail, the transfer facility will lower property values and that trucks will endanger pedestrians and bicyclists.
“Our greatest concern is the infrastructure,” Winkel said. “We have always had roads with no sidewalks, and it’s a problem now. We have high-density, low-income housing projects, schools and people walking and there are no sidewalks. And once the Vernal Pike intersection goes away, how will those trucks get in and out of there without coming through our poor neighborhood?”
She and representatives from other neighborhood associations intend to rally against the plan.
Stevens said no one from the neighborhood has approached her with concerns about the transfer station.
“It is a natural progression for our business,” she said. “The thing we are proud of is that this keeps the service local. It’s an open market, and the Rumpkes of the world are always looking into local markets. We will employ locally and all we do goes straight back to Bloomington.”
She understands residents’ apprehension, but said their fears are unfounded. “This is an industrial part of town, with several businesses having trucks that come and go throughout the day,” Stevens said. “I don’t think this will add to that very much.”

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See the application

The permit application for Indiana Recycling Resource LLC, doing business as Vernal Pike Transfer & Recycling, can be viewed at www.idem.IN.gov. Click on the virtual file cabinet, “VFC,” on the right side of the page in the dark green banner. Then click on “Document Search” in the middle of the page. When the document search window loads in the upper right corner, type “67075996” in the box. Click on “Go.”