MARBLEHEAD — More than 100 people tuned in on Tuesday night to an online community forum held by the Board of Health that discussed plans for the long-awaited rebuilding of the town’s transfer station.
Dana Weeder, principal at the Salem-based Winter Street Architects, presented the options together with the town’s Director of Public Health Andrew Petty.
Petty said that whichever plan the community chooses, the town wants to build a sound transfer station that will last for 50 years. During the meeting, Petty revealed that the Board of Health has $1.25 million to put towards the project.
The first option would cost the town $6.275 million and would not use Green Street for an exit for residential or commercial vehicles from the transfer-station property, except for trash trailers. The main idea behind this option is to separate residential and commercial customers except when they use the same scale, Petty said.
The plan features one steel structure with fiberglass siding that would both accommodate the pit and a one-story staff area with a break room, kitchenette, bathrooms, and locker rooms. Residential vehicles would dump trash on one side, while commercial vehicles would come around the building and dump into the same trailer.
The plan includes leveling out the site with a retaining wall on the left edge, which would cost $750,000 to accomplish.
A second option consists of a new design created in 2022, which carries an estimated construction cost of $1.68 million.
“One of the major concerns is the flow of traffic off the site,” Petty said. “It is a much more simple flow, but it does use Green Street.”
The pit will be covered with a translucent structure that won’t need artificial lighting, Weeder said, while the staff area will be smaller and in a separate shed.
The new scale house will become a command center, where the employees will be able to see the whole site from the windows. A secondary hut will be located at the recycling area for additional transactions.
A swap shed will be built on the site with fiberglass siding, and no heating or cooling. It will have electricity. Items will be brought out of the swap shed on rolling carts to the pavement, while some can remain in the shed for viewing.
Rebuilding the site would not result in more workers manning it afterwards, Petty said. There are currently five full-time union members and one part-time employee working at the transfer station.
He also suggested that the transfer station will switch from a sticker-based access to a permitting system, where an optical eye would read license plates.
Besides the practical things that residents wanted to know, such as how the materials will be separated and where the big items that don’t fit into the recycling bins would go, the participants were concerned about two major issues: the effect the traffic would have on Green Street abutters, and the project being vetted through an open and transparent process, involving a separate building committee.
“The abutters here had some assurance of light traffic, but with Option B there would be constant traffic,” said David Lieberman, a resident of the town.
He asked for additional mitigation, like a sound barrier, and Petty responded that the Board of Health is open to such considerations.
Another neighbor, Deb Payson, was concerned about car and truck fumes due to constant traffic. Some residents asked for a traffic study to see if Green Street can handle the traffic flow that the second option, dubbed Option B, would cause.
Several attendees spoke in favor of creating an independent building committee that would oversee the project.
“(It) looks like both plan A and B will come to the Town Meeting,” said resident Jim Zisson. “I really urge you to appoint an independent building committee like it is done for schools.”
He also recommended that the board obtain three to four estimates of the cost and allocate a healthy contingency in the budget for dealing with hazardous waste and other unexpected expenses, and that it holds another public meeting before Town Meeting to discuss financials.
Terri Tauro, a lifelong resident of Marblehead and president of the Marblehead Municipal Employees Union who sounded the alarm about the working conditions at the transfer station in December 2021, urged the town to replace the old trailer that was falling apart.
“The employees have had a pretty rough time,” Tauro said. “We need a safe, clean place for them to retreat.”
According to Tauro’s account about her visits to the transfer station in late December, there were abundant signs of a rodent infestation in the rusted and rotting trailer, rainwater leaking from light fixtures and the floor was structurally weakened.
Since January, the town patched things up, enclosed the electrical box that had exposed live wires, and used rodent smoke bombs for rat infestation, which seems to be subsiding, Tauro said, but the trailer was still in poor condition.
It was unclear if the employees have continued to use the trailer as they await construction of a new facility.
