Quincy port sees salvation in trash
MOSES LAKE — Garbage.
That’s what the Port of Quincy hopes will get its 30-acre intermodal facility working again.
“We keep looking for ways to put this back to work,” said Port of Quincy Commissioner Patrick Connelly.
So the port is seriously considering a proposal from Houston-based Waste Management to run a “transfer” facility for trash from Snohomish County bound for Waste Management’s landfill in Wenatchee.
“The facility is already there,” said Waste Management spokesman John Chelmanaik. “We’ve been talking about the intermodal transfer of solid waste.”
The proposal is simple: haul in by train about 500,000 tons of garbage in containers annually from Snohomish County, home to the city of Everett and nearly 750,000 people, and then transfer those containers of garbage to trucks, which will then take that garbage out to the Wenatchee landfill.
Waste Management is still only bidding for the Snohomish garbage contract, and so nothing is final yet. But the company hopes to start using the Quincy intermodal facility as soon as May of 2018 if it can win that contract.
Chelmanaik estimated transferring trash containers from trains to trucks would add about 40-60 truck trips through Quincy each day.
He was also careful to note that the proposed Quincy station is not really a transfer station, at least not in the way people in the waste industry understand “transfer.”
“A transfer station is where waste is exposed, pushed around, and compacted,” he said. “We’d bring it in containers by train. No waste would be exposed in Quincy.”
According to Commissioner Connelly, there were no objections to the Waste Management proposal at a recent public meeting. The Port of Quincy has been looking to reinvigorate its intermodal center ever since its previous tenant went bankrupt.
“It’s still our facility, and if they get the contract [with Snohomish County], we will lease the yard,” Connelly said.
Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com.