Westbury residents do not want a transfer station in the village and some two dozen expressed as much, adamantly, at an informational meeting last Monday evening attended by more than 350 people.

About four years ago, village Mayor Ernest Strada and Trustees Joan Boes and Peter Cavallaro voted in favor of conducting a feasibility study to consider alternatives in garbage disposal; former trustee and then-Deputy Mayor Paul Echausse voted against the study and the late trustee Charles Russell was not present. As a result of the 3-1 vote, the village hired Cameron Engineering & Associates, LLP to conduct the study and the possibility of using Westbury's existing Department of Public Works (DPW) yard as a transfer station.

The study, however, found that its yard, located on Dover Street at Union Avenue, was not feasible due to its size and the fact that the village's sanitation and highway departments, among others, that currently operate at the site could not remain and that there wouldn't be any place within the village to relocated them. Cameron then looked toward alternative sites within the village, coming up with 172 School Street as a suitable option for a transfer station.

Owned and operated by Anthony Core of Omni Recycling/Jamaica Ash, the School Street site, which is bounded by the Long Island Rail Road and Union Avenue, currently hosts three buildings and is used by Omni as a storage and maintenance yard. According to Cameron, the site could be modified to house a transfer station that would enable the village to dispose of approximately 1,125 tons of solid waste a day (the amount needed to make such a facility economically feasible).

Note, a transfer station is a solid waste management facility; it is not a landfill, dump, garbage building to store garbage, incinerator or a composting facility. It is a building where solid waste is uploaded by local sanitation trucks for same day transfer into a larger truck or train car and carried away to a disposal facility on or off Long Island.

Each of Westbury's 12,000 residents generate about a pound of solid waste, give or take, daily. Add to that commercial garbage and the incorporated village averages between 9,500 and 12,000 tons per year. A local transfer station, "could offer residents and businesses significant benefits and security into the future," said the mayor, specifically in terms of lower costs. Such is specifically important, said Strada, at a time when garbage disposal costs are getting higher and higher and contracts held by the village as well as numerous other local municipalities throughout Nassau are slated to expire in 2009.

The village's current sanitation spending plan is $1.41 million of which $700,000 or 20 percent of the total annual budget is paid in tipping fees (costs per ton to drop off garbage). Back in 1996, disposal costs to the village were around $56 per ton and this year, trash is disposed of through a $79 per ton contract with Babylon-based Omni Recycling. Within the next few years, village officials expect disposal costs to increase to over $100 a ton due to inflation and because the need and availability of such disposal is anticipated to rise significantly across Long Island.

In addition to saving the village money for vehicle wear and tear and workforce hours - current public works employees would no longer have to drive back and forth to Suffolk County and wait in line, sometimes for up to two hours each trip - to dispose of solid waste, a host transfer station would potentially provide the village with an annual savings of $350,000 or 8.75 million over the course of 25 years.

Such savings would be possible, said Village Administrator/Clerk-Treasurer Thomas Savino, because transfer fees currently paid by the village (in the amount of $260,000 a year) would be waived and the cost of traveling to Babylon (in the amount of $90,000 a year) would be eliminated. Additionally, the village could make at least $280,000 a year because it could charge host fees from other municipalities looking to transfer their garbage at the Westbury station.

Village residents, along with a significant number of those living within the Town of North Hempstead boundaries, do not agree with Westbury's proposal and more than two dozen expressed their opposition to the proposal at last Monday's meeting. Truck traffic, odor, air quality, vectors (bugs, rats, birds, etc.) and possible depreciated home values as a result of a local station were along the top reasons of contention.

Among those who spoke out against the proposal was Westbury Board of Education Vice President Adelaide Brinson. The district, she said, recently passed a resolution (1101) in opposition specifically because its location is unfavorable, specifically due to its close proximity to the Dryden Street Elementary School.

Another resident told the board that through her own research she learned that a similar transfer station in Elizabeth, NJ has led to numerous cases of asthma among other breathing problems, particularly in children. According to village officials, such a facility is regulated by the New York State Department of Conservation (DEC) and requires state-of-the-art equipment to assure minimal environmental impact as well as odor and vermin control.

Longtime resident Colonel Spann Watson stressed his opposition to the idea and stated he is concerned about the negative environmental impact it would have on the community's air quality and roadways. His "Go and look for somewhere else to put this" statement was met with rousing applause.

While residents oppose the truck traffic a transfer station in the community would generate, experts from Cameron Engineering testified that the opposite would be the case. Currently, the site generates some 620 trips Monday through Friday (410 which are trucks) and 508 trips on Saturdays (of which 358 are trucks). The proposed transfer station would eliminate 100 trips by relocating the site's current employees and generate 350 weekday trips from trucks plus car traffic while eliminating 70-foot interstate tractor trailers altogether.

Should the village board vote against the School Street proposal, other solid waste disposal options would have to be considered, especially since Westbury's current contract with Omni in Babylon is set to expire in 2009. Among the options are extending the Omni contract, returning to the North Hempstead station, creating a new contract with Covanta (formerly American Ref-Fuel) or reaching out to a private company through a Request for Proposals (RFP) method. Additional, in an effort to stabilize costs, the village could also consider replacing its tax rate-based system with a user fee-based system, meaning that residents and business owners would be charged for how much garbage they dispose of rather than a flat rate.