WM, a waste management company, defended its plan to build a waste transfer station on the east side of Akron during a Ward 5 meeting on Thursday.
WM purchased the vacant property on Archwood Avenue this summer, Area Disposal Manager Erick Palmer said. The plan includes opening the new facility on Archwood Avenue, which would transfer waste from local curbside trucks to larger vehicles for transportation to a destination outside the city, and closing an aging facility on Fountain Street. Residents packed city council chambers in recent weeks expressing concerns about the new facility, including potential environmental impacts and whether there was enough communication with residents beforehand.
"There's a couple things this transfer station is not in any way. It is not a dump. That's a complete misrepresentation," Palmer said. "Those have been illegal and have been outlawed since the 80s, when they were all forced to clean and close."
The waste transfer station also will not service hazardous waste, he said.
"It's not designed, nor will it be permitted to for hazardous waste," Palmer said. "It will serve your end of use household products. That's it."
The property on Archwood Avenue is the only one available that fits all the criteria for the proposed waste transfer station, he said.
"We also knew that we wanted to help combat the illegal dumping here in Ward 5," Palmer said. "This has the highest rate of illegal dumping, and you're going to see the site that we keep cleaning up on 1400 East Archwood that we hope is going to be our new home. We keep cleaning it up."
Many residents have expressed frustration that they weren't notified of the project sooner. WM started outreach for the project well before it came before city council, Palmer said.
“We began our outreach in Ward 5 this past summer, just after we secured the Archwood property," he said.
The city also did outreach in Ward 5 this summer, knocking on doors, presenting during community meetings and giving tours of a similar facility, Mayor Shammas Malik said in a press conference this week.
The city looked at resident's concerns about the proposed facility, including if it would have any impact on property values, Planning Director Kyle Julien said. He compared property values in Oakwood, he said, where WM operates a much larger waste transfer station.
“Property values have not been impacted in that neighborhood," he said.
"It's not designed, nor will it be permitted to for hazardous waste. It will serve your end of use household products. That's it."WM Area Disposal Manager Erick Palmer
A study done by an independent realtor also found that property values would not be impacted in Akron, Palmer said.
Julien also spoke with the planning director in Oakwood, he said.
“’How has this been received? A lot of complaints? What’s the impact?’," Julien said. "And the guy said, ‘There are no complaints.’”
Palmer has given tours of the Oakwood facility to council members and residents to show them what the proposed facility will be like, he said.
"They're holding our feet on the odors. Everybody that has come to the facility has verified, standing there, that were no odors," he said.
"We know how to do it."
The conditional use permit WM is seeking from the city includes that WM uses odor eliminating technology at all times, he said.
WM also did a noise study to see if that would impact residents nearby, Palmer said.
"We're registering from the edge of our property with those combined noises at the level somewhere between a whisper and a toilet being flushed," he said.
Two traffic studies conducted by WM found that it would have no recognizable impact on residents as well, Palmer said.
"We're surrounded by trucking companies, so this is a heavy trucking area," he said. "In fact, there's one company in there area that has over 1,000 trucks, so our daily average is really very small compared to other companies around us."
The proposed site on Archwood Avenue would be 500 to 1,000 feet away from homes in the area, according to Mayor Shammas Malik's office, which is double the distance required by the state. The current facility on Fountain Street is directly adjacent to homes.
Keep Akron Beautiful CEO Jacqui Ricchiuti wrote a letter in support of the new facility.
"I am confident that this site will be much cleaner than the current residential Fountain Street Transfer Station," she wrote. "The current location that is right off the highway, very close to Akron residents' homes, is super visible and always covered with litter."
Middlebury residents near the Fountain Street facility have also supported the proposal, citing that the proposed facility is much larger than the current one and that the site will be far from residential areas, according to a letter of support.
"We are impressed by the spirit of improvement in ecological and sustainability practices we see from both the city and WM and hope that they will carry forward at the Fountain Street site in the form of some gentler purpose for that long-battered space at the heart of our neighborhood and city," they wrote.
WM is not moving the old site on Fountain Street to the new location, the mayor's office said. The proposed plan is a new and better facility.
However, residents still pushed back on the proposed facility, saying they simply do not want it in their neighborhood. Ultimately, they asked WM to pause the process, so they can be more involved.
WM is currently waiting for its conditional use permit to be approved by council.
