City of Lubbock in the Process of Implementing its First Solid Waste Transfer Station
The last week of August, the City of Lubbock closed on a piece of property that will be the future site of the Solid Waste Transfer Station. The City of Lubbock studied this option a few times over the past 20 years as a more efficient option than residential collection trucks making several daily trips to the landfill facility near Abernathy. More information on the transfer station will be made available as the project progresses.
The future site is located on the north side of the Marsha Sharp Freeway between Upland and Alcove Avenues. (Map is attached.)
Sound bites from Director of Solid Waste Brenda Haney, and b-roll of transfer station examples are available to download here.
Sound 1: “Quite simply, a transfer station is an enclosed building that City residential collection trucks will drive into, they will push their load out onto the transfer station tipping floor. That material will be pushed into a pit, loaded into bigger transfer tractor trailers that then make the long haul to the landfill in Abernathy.” (TRT- :20)
Sound 2: “We needed a transfer station, because the landfill is 20 to 30 milles away depending on where we leave our routes. That’s a long way for those residential collection vehicles to haul. They’re really intended to be focused on your routes in the city limits and not making those long over the road hauls.” (TRT- :15)
Sound 3: “There are a lot of things really positive about this process. A- we’re going to get that efficiency on our routes. So those trucks will stay in town, unload, turn, be able to get to another route. Customers should see dramatic improvements in that route efficiency and collections. We’re going to eliminate wear and tear on those vehicles because they’re not having to make those long road trips over and over and over again during the course of the day. We should get some fuel efficiencies and savings because we don’t have those vehicles making those and just the wear and tear overall on those vehicles.” (TRT- :33)
Sound 4: “The City has studied transfer stations and the need for them multiple times over the last 20 years. There’s been at least three different studies. The most recent was completed in May 2020. That gave us initial site assessments of sites we wanted to look at. We expanded that study to go on and do some more detailed analysis of those final sites, we made our selection, and that process came to completion about October 2022.” (TRT- :29)
Sound 5: “It’s not just going to be a transfer station where we’re unloading waste on this transfer station floor. We’re also going to have a citizen’s convenience station. So this will be another location where residents will be able to haul material directly to this facility. There’ll be regional recycling opportunities that we’ll be able to implement going forward at this facility.” (TRT- :30)
