Two North Carolina companies are planning facilities in rural Hyde County, NC, that would bring in construction and demolition debris from elsewhere by barge for recycling or disposal in a landfill.
Hyde County officials have endorsed the plans for a 530-acre tract on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. County manager Don Davenport said that the project will bring the county jobs and about $100,000 a year in fees.
But conservation and environmental groups are wary. They say a landfill and barge terminal should be studied carefully along with other projects proposed in the area, including an egg-producing facility that will house 4 million chickens.
"This project represents yet another threat to an ecologically sensitive area of the state," said Courtney E. Washburn, clean water campaign coordinator for the N.C. Sierra Club.
The proposed Port Pungo Marine Terminal and Alligator River Recycling is a venture of MRR Southern, a Raleigh company, and Edenton River Barge Co. Hyde County's Board of Commissioners has granted the developers a franchise and a variance that allows them to build in a floodplain.
But developers will have to obtain several state and federal permits for construction and approval from the state's solid waste management office. A company official said it could take 18 months to two years to obtain permits and build the facilities.
There are about 40 other construction and demolition landfills in the state.
Simon Rich of Edenton, a partner in the venture, said the project differs from other construction and debris landfills because debris will be shipped by barge. Using barges, he said, is cheaper and cleaner than shipping by truck.
He said the facility will not dispose of hazardous material or household garbage.
Much of the material will be recycled, he said. Concrete will be crushed for reuse as aggregate or stone material. Wood will be chipped for boiler fuel; steel will be recycled. The leftover material will go into a landfill at the site.
Promotional materials prepared by the developers say the benefits include 45 jobs, $1.5 million in annual wages and a 30-cent-a-ton "host fee" to Hyde County on non-recycled materials. Initial projects call for 2,300 tons of material a day and a payment to the county of about $100,000 a year.
Rich, owner of the barge company, said the port facilities will be built on his family's property with extensive undeveloped land as buffers. The Intracoastal Waterway is ideal, he said, because it is a man-made channel. Raleigh (North Carolina) News