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Intervale Compost will close to new material

Written by Administrator

Sunday, 27 February 2011

Intervale Compost will close to new material
Starting Tuesday, the county's food wastes will be trucked to Middlebury and Moretown, while a new regional compost site is constructed in Williston
By Candace Page, Free Press Staff Writer
February 27, 2011

After 24 years, the end is near for composting in Burlington’s Intervale. The operation will stop accepting food waste and yard debris this week, although sale of finished compost at the site will continue through the spring.

Starting Tuesday, the Chittenden Solid Waste District will pay to truck 45 tons of food waste each week to compost operations in Middlebury and Moretown until the district opens its own $2 million compost site in Williston in June or July.

District Chairman Paul Stabler of South Burlington said last week he hopes the change will be invisible to the restaurants, schools and other institutions that ship their food scraps to the Intervale.

Private haulers will continue to pick up the discarded food from their customers, but will take it to the waste district in Williston, where the waste will be transferred to water-tight roll-off containers. The district hoped to sign contracts last week to truck the food debris to Vermont Natural Ag Products in Middlebury and Grow Compost of Vermont in Moretown.

Chittenden County residents can continue to take their food scraps and yard waste to most local drop-off centers. The district will move the yard debris to Williston.

In all, the trucking and related expenses for moving the food waste out of the county will cost the district an estimated $1,200 a week, or about $22,000 if the new Williston site opens on schedule.

Stabler said the district is determined to prevent any interruption in composting, now that so many businesses and institutions have embraced the idea.

“We don’t want people to start thinking this waste is going to be landfilled,” he said. “We have our foot in the door with composting, and we’d like to see it increase. Composting is a good way to do something productive with the waste stream.”

Food waste, horse manure and leaves have been turned into compost in the Intervale since 1987, when the operation was started by Gardeners Supply Company.

The site later was owned and run by the nonprofit Intervale Center which transformed 13,000 tons of waste a year into products it sold to home gardeners and professional landscapers under the Intervale Compost brand.

In 2007, the center ran into a barrage of regulatory problems and was told it must obtain a land-use permit that would require expensive archeological studies. There was concern the operation could pollute nearby surface or groundwater; lay in a flood zone; and disturbed Native American artifacts buried in the soil.

The solid waste district took over operation of Intervale Compost in 2008. Under an agreement with the Attorney General’s Office, the district agreed to stop accepting new material in the Intervale as of July 2010, later amended to March 1, 2011 — Tuesday. All the compost piles in the Intervale must be removed by July 1.

Composting organic waste is a key part of the district’s strategy to lessen the need for more landfill space. It makes more sense to turn leaves and food scraps into a commercial product than to truck them to distant solid-waste dumps, the district reasons.

While work continues on the new compost site in Williston, the district also has enlisted a marketing company to help it come up with a new name for the finished compost it will sell.

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20110227/LIVING09/110225012/Intervale-Compost-will-close-to-new-material

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