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ECUA, county turning the wheels on recycling

November 20, 2014
/ Shannon Nickinson
/ training-development

Escambia County could be a step closer to finding a permanent — and local — solution to recycling. The Emerald Coast Utilities Authority this week issued a request for qualifications (RFQ), seeking a private contractor to build a single-stream recycling facility. The idea has the support of Escambia County officials, signaling a new era of cooperation among two government agencies that have quarreled bitterly in the past. The request is “to complete the detailed design, permitting, financing, equipment supply and installation, site and building construction, start-up, testing and long-term operation of a turnkey facility to serve the needs of the entire county.” “This is a public-private partnership, just like IREP in Montgomery,” says ECUA spokeswoman Nathalie Bowers. “(The private contractor would) put up all the money for it.” ECUA and the county can provide the municipal solid waste and the recyclable stream for the privately funded operation. The responses are due back Dec. 18. “We hope it will not be an isolated incident” of cooperation between the county and ECUA, says County Administrator Jack Brown. “We hope to continue to foster that relationship and work together to conduct the business of the people in the most effective and efficient way possible.” The hopes for the facility could be even higher than having a local, dedicated processing facility for the cans, bottles and paper product residents so dutifully sort for recycling now. “If we get the type of system we want, we expect we could be the leading recycler in the state of Florida,” Brown says. County, ECUA suggest sites The RFQ suggested two sites for the facility: The county-owned Perdido Landfill or the ECUA-owned Central Water Reclamation Facility. It also offers an option that includes a provision for a third location of the private company’s choice. “We have 2,000 acres at the (Central Water Reclamation Facility),” Bowers says. “There’s rail access, interstate access.” ECUA expects Infinitus Energy to apply. Infinitus runs IREP, the facility in Montgomery that has been processing recycling from the Pensacola area since West Florida Recycling shut down under financial pressure earlier this year. Brown says the landfill location includes opportunities through economic development channels for property and tax incentives, “but the ECUA site is also being considered, plus any other site of the firm that’s selected.” In July, with State Rep. Clay Ingram acting as mediator, the county and ECUA announced that there was a draft proposal to seek the construction of a facility similar to Montgomery’s $35 million Infinitus Renewal Energy Park. It boasts state-of-the-art technology that recovers recyclables from the normal flow of household trash. Watch a video of the facility here. [youtube id="7nnUWS_CQk0"] A Pensacola area version of that plant could bring between 120 and 220 new jobs, depending on the size of the facility constructed. Escambia County and ECUA have had a tense relationship in the past. Last year the county put out an RFP for a single-stream recycling facility to be built at the county-owned Perdido Landfill. The only response came from Envision Waste Services LLC, a company based in Cleveland, Ohio, that was formed in 2008 and owned by Steven Viny. Envision designed and built two mixed-waste processing facilities in Ohio. Representatives of Infinitus have said in the past they could be interested in Northwest Florida if the market and terms were right. ECUA has a two-year contract with the company that manages the facility in Montgomery to process recyclables from ECUA. ECUA also is contracted with Santa Rosa County to handle its recyclables, which it also takes to Montgomery. The City of Pensacola recyclables also go to Montgomery. Brown says the project should help increase the life expectancy of the Perdido landfill. “We will have less revenue directly into the landfill, but we are looking at licensing agreements or franchise fees that would potentially offset that,” Brown says. “It needs to be a win-win-win to make this public-private partnership work.”

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ECUA, county turning the wheels on recycling

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