Kent County, Michigan, construction companies face diversion challenges

Kent County, Michigan, officials are looking to move away from using the South Kent Landfill by 2030 and are telling local construction companies to prepare to adjust for a new model of disposal, a report by MiBiz says. 

The South Kent Landfill is nearing capacity and the report says the Kent County Department of Public Works, Grand Rapids, plans to close the facility. Darwin Baas, executive director of DPW, says in the report that the department is developing plans for a 200-acre sustainable business park that will handle and process construction and demolition (C&D) debris and other materials that would be landfill bound.

The report says West Michigan’s current recycling rate is around 10 percent. Baas says the sustainable business park will help with the area’s landfill reduction goal of 90 percent by 2030.

A study from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) says more than 49 million cubic yards of waste was landfilled in the state in 2016. Of that 49 million cubic yards, 6.5 million cubic yards was C&D debris. Baas says in the report this number can be higher because the county doesn’t track what types of materials are being brought into the landfill.

For example, Baas says in the report, the DEQ study classified 940,000 cubic yards of waste from Byron Township as municipal and commercial despite a large amount of it coming from construction projects.

Currently, construction companies in West Michigan are struggling to set up multiple receptacles for different materials at job sites, the report says. Pioneer Construction Co., a contracting firm based in Grand Rapids, diverts more than 60 percent of debris from landfills, the report says. Chris Beckering, executive vice president at Pioneer, says in the report their planning efforts on the front end of a building project allow them to reach its diversion rate.