C&D World: Rail Hauling Providing Waste Outlet

Recyclers in the Northeast United States petitioned the federal government earlier this decade to close a Surface Transportation Board loophole that was allowing waste transfer stations located along rail right-of-ways to skirt solid waste permitting processes.

The situation was making out-of-state landfilling especially affordable to the detriment of recyclers of municipal solid waste and mixed C&D materials.

Rail hauling of waste is now more closely regulated, but it has not gone away, attendees of

C&D World 2009, held March 22-24 at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Fla., learned.

Jim Newell, president of South Orange, N.J.-based Transload America, provided attendees with an update of his company’s operations.

Newell, whose background is in the railroad industry, now oversees a company that he says provides “a legitimate alternative” destination for C&D materials.

Newell referred to companies that had been “taking advantage of loopholes” who operated their transfer stations as short-haul rail facilities, and acknowledged that his company had started out that way, but was now “moving toward full permitting.”

At the TransRail facility, 1,500 tons of material generated in the Northeast are baled (with liquid squeezed out) and tightly shrink-wrapped, loaded onto rail cars and shipped to a landfill in Alabama that stacks the bales to achieve maximum landfill volume capacity.

The bales, said Newell, do not emit odors or attract seagulls, as typically occurs at landfills. And additionally, should a landfill mining venture prove profitable, he believes material will stay dry inside the bales so it can be recovered within the next 40 years.

Newell remarked that the company’s current recycling rate is about 3 percent, saying it is “not economically viable” to strive for a higher rate.

He remarked, though, that the company is exploring an option with a landfill in Ohio that would divert some materials into a waste-to-energy system.