ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Maybe you’ve seen it? A big building going up off the New Seward Highway near the Dowling exit. That building is the city’s new transfer station for Solid Waste Services and it’s moving right along.in July 2020, with a completion date scheduled for the spring of 2023. The facility will replace the current transfer station where most of the city’s garbage goes now.
Solid Waste Services Engineering and Planning Manager Mike Rhodes said 80% of the trash from Anchorage, Eagle River and Girdwood lands in the transfer station before being hauled to the landfill in Eagle River. The aging facility, built in the 1970s is no longer able to keep up.That’s why the utility embarked on a $120 million state of the art transfer station on a 27-acre parcel right across the street.
“One of the biggest complaints about our existing site is wait times, especially on the residential side,” he said. “If you ever come here on a Saturday, you could be waiting for up to an hour. And one of the main goals for this facility is getting customers in and out at a much more efficient rate.”
Rhodes said another advantage of the new site is what it will allow them to do with the old. Solid Waste Services hopes to rent the current transfer station to a third party so it can become a recycling center. Rhodes said increasing recycling in the city will allow them to divert items from the quickly filling landfill.
“Anchorage has a diversion rate of about 7%. We have a goal of increasing that up to 20%,” he said. “So this will help to push that along and increase the space available for diversion, not only for SWS but for the public and commercial customers as well.”
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