Transfer station completion delayed

By Tom Hintgen (Contact) | The Daily Journal

Published Thursday, September 18, 2008

The Fergus Falls solid waste transfer station is facing delays and the construction company building the facility has asked Otter Tail County to extend into December its completion date.

Breitback Construction Co. of Elrosa, is building the solid waste transfer station on the west side of Fergus Falls near the municipal airport. The company expected to complete the facility by Oct. 15 but is now expecting to finish on about Dec. 4.

The county, however, is pushing Breitback for a faster timetable. That’s due, in part, to the county’s desire to end use as a transfer station the former incinerator building at the Regional Treatment Center (RTC) campus.

Refuse incineration at the RTC ended in February 2006.

“Starting in October, there will be no heat or water services to the RTC building which will make continued operations more difficult, at best,” said Otter Tail County Solid Waste Director Mike Hanan.

“The MPCA (Minnesota Pollution Control Agency), which issued the temporary permit, assumed that we would be in the RTC facility for approximately six months,” Hanan said.

Hanan said the MPCA has been accommodating to this point, but would like to see the temporary facility closed. Combustible waste is hauled to the Perham Resource Recovery Facility and to the Dakota Landfill at Gwinner, N.D., from the temporary station at the RTC site.

Breitback cites two main reasons for the delay in completing the project. The first relates to weather which originally delayed the start of construction last spring. Second is the issue of turn-around-time submittals.

This relates to providing documentation at the start of each construction phase, necessary so that contract specifications can be checked out.

“As for the request for the delay to December, we’ll be meeting with our engineer consultants in the near future to address this issue,” Hanan said. “One thing is certain — we as a county want a timetable that can make up for lost time.”

Another construction issue in late 2008, dependent on the weather, is blacktop paving at the transfer station site. In recent years, Otter Tail County has been snow free at Thanksgiving, but this isn’t always the case.

Hanan said that, despite delays, progress is being made at the construction site. This week the metal roof for the main building will be on site, and next week the workers will position pre-cast walls.

“The scale house is pretty well framed in,” Hanan said.

The Otter Tail County Board of Commissioners previously awarded the low bid of $2,599,298 for construction of the solid waste transfer station to Breitback of Elrosa, a town south of Sauk Centre. The bid includes $2.56 million for the basic structure and an additional $38,900 for fire protection equipment.

In the fall of 2007 the county board, in coordination with Hanan, returned to the drawing board and scaled back the project from $3.1 million to $2.6 million. At the same time they moved the project to the 2008 construction season. Modifying the mechanical room and the tarping room, along with changing some painting requirements, equated to savings of close to $270,000.

The new transfer station will include 18,000 square feet and have two drive-through floors. One will be for commercial trucks and the other for residential vehicles. Loads will be dropped into trailers or tipped onto sections within the transfer station. Designated areas will be for garbage and for bulk materials such as used furniture.

On the residential side, special drop areas will be designated for tires, scrap metal, electronics, appliances and other items.

Since the new transfer station will be located near the Fergus Falls Municipal Airport, the county board clarified the changes with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) which gave its approval. In revised plans, an outside loading compactor was eliminated to comply with FAA requests.

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