BEMIDJI -- A new transfer station planned for Beltrami County is just one of five facilities scheduled for construction and expansion in Greater Minnesota.
The five facility project has been organized by a five county Solid Waste Advisory Board which includes Beltrami, Clearwater, Polk, Mahnomen, Norman and will soon add Hubbard. Once completed, Polk County Environmental Services Administrator Jon Steiner said the new and updated facilities will be beneficial to all six counties involved.
Along with the new 40,000 square-foot transfer station in Bemidji for Beltrami County, the project includes new transfer stations in Park Rapids for Hubbard County and in Crookston for Polk County. Additionally, work will be done to expand the Polk County Resource Recovery Facility in Fosston, and construct a composting site in Polk County.
"Everything really started moving forward in about 2011, that's when we started talking about doing some changes at the resource recovery facility," Steiner said. "A lot of the facilities that the counties owned and operated were all getting to be 20-25 years old, and the equipment was getting worn out. People were looking for alternatives for replacing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment.
"As we saw more and more of the need, we decided to move forward with a project to handle more material and handle it more quickly," Steiner added.
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An example of meeting that need is the expansion at the Fosston facility, which will include new processing equipment to extract more material and handle additional recyclables. The project will also include adding a natural gas fired boiler to the system. Steiner said this project is integral since Beltrami County began transporting recyclables to the facility in 2015 and Hubbard County plans to start sending in 2017.
Combined, all five projects together cost a total of $28.5 million. Steiner said the Solid Waste Advisory Board has received $8 million from the state and expects another $9.5 million from the state in 2016 for a total of $17.5 million in Minnesota funds.
"We were awarded what they call phase one funding in the last legislative session, so they gave us half the money we requested in state funds," Steiner said. "The intent of that was to get us up and going. The idea is the second portion of the funds will arrive following the next legislative session.
"We are also looking at contingencies in the event that the phase two funding wouldn't arrive. If it doesn't, the plan would be to do the Fosston expansion, which benefits the six counties, and to do the Beltrami County transfer station. The money provided in phase one is enough for those projects," Steiner continued. "We're hoping we don't hit that and all indications are we won't hit that. I think the state made as healthy a gesture they could when they appropriated phase one funding that they would come back to complete it."
At this point, the board has signed agreements for professional services to do preliminary work in securing funds that have been appropriated. Steiner said the next step is to finalize design and engineering work in the next couple of months for all five projects to prepare for bidding in the spring.
"That way we can get into construction next summer," Steiner said.
