AMSTERDAM — More than a year after the Jefferson County Board of Commissioners refused to support a $25.6 million rail project at Apex Landfill, the landfill’s owner, Interstate Waste Services, is moving forward with a scaled-back version of the project.

David Cieply, executive president of landfill operations for IWS, said on Oct. 5 that the original project would have created more rail tracks at Apex’s existing facility, allowing the landfill to stage waste-filled rail cars at its own facility rather than in railyards in surrounding communities like Mingo Junction.

The project, Cieply said, would not have expanded the landfill’s total area of operation or increased the amount of tonnage the landfill is permitted to accept on a given day.

“We were trying to reduce the amount of any trains or cars holding our material in Mingo and support the staging of it at the landfill where we can control it better,” Cieply said.

The project gained “no traction” due to lack of support from the Jefferson County commissioners, contributing to IWS not receiving a grant for the project. This led to Apex continuing with only part of the original project — a gondola offloading building, set to be completed by the middle of 2024 and paid for entirely out of IWS’s own funds.

“(The project) doesn’t expand our track, it just provides another facility that enables us to unload gondolas,” Cieply said.

Development of the new project’s gondola building cost $15 million, Cieply said. The building will “open up many more job opportunities,” he said, bringing with it between 10 and 15 new jobs to the landfill, which he said employs more than 140 individuals.

Currently, Apex accepts 20-foot wide, 8-foot high and 12-foot high steel containers that are “totally sealed” on the outside and filled with waste material, Cieply said. Gondolas, which Apex will not be able to accept until the new building is complete, are open-faced containers typically used for coal and slag.

The open-faced gondolas can carry construction and demolition debris, Cieply said, but any municipal solid waste must be totally covered with something “other than just a tarp,” such as a spray-applied mortar that solidifies on top of waste and prevents the escape of material and odors until it is broken by an excavator.

“We’re doing everything as environmentally compliant, as we always will do,” Cieply said. He expressed later that IWS’s hope for Mingo Junction is to have waste staged in the community for as little time as possible.

Mingo Junction’s railyard is the transfer location between Norfolk Southern trains from New Jersey and the Ohio Central Railroad System, which brings container cars back and forth from Apex. In an ideal situation, Cieply said, waste-filled cars arrive in Mingo Junction only sit for a day at most.

“At this point in time, the maximum amount — with the crew that they have — can haul about 80 cars, which is about 320 containers, and if there’s more than 80 that were brought in, that is the only reason that some may stay for just one more day,” Cieply said. “Otherwise, in a seamless world, it would … minimize the potential risk of anything staying there.”

Cieply said the new building will be able to process between 10 and 15 gondola cars per day. Apex does not anticipate receiving more than that amount, Cieply said, meaning staging expectations in Mingo Junction should not be affected.

The landfill is limited to accepting 10,000 tons of municipal solid waste per day, Cieply said, though it can accept more than that as long as the waste is not MSW. The landfill is also limited annually and therefore cannot exceed 3.6 million total tons.

The Jefferson County commissioners had initially met with representatives from Apex owner Interstate Waste Services on April 21, 2022. During that meeting, three representatives of IWS’s original project, including Cieply, asked for a letter of support from the commissioners to accompany a grant application seeking an 80 percent government match for the project.

At the time, plans for the project included $10.5 million for earthwork paving, $3.3 million for construction of an additional 5,000 feet of rail track, $3.6 million for a gondola building, $6.2 million for equipment and $2 million for power line relocation. Cieply told the commissioners during the meeting that rail investment would create 25 more jobs and “alleviate” the railyard in Mingo Junction by decreasing the number of waste-carrying rail cars staged in the community.

Cieply stated during the meeting that waste contained in rail cars and staged in surrounding communities does not count toward Apex’s 10,000 limit, as it has not yet entered the landfill’s working face, and anything staged outside of that would be “excess volume.”

The commissioners remained open but hesitant to support the development until conversations ceased the following week, seemingly spurred on by news of Apex entering into a nine-month feasibility study on the former Crossridge Landfill — news that had not been brought up by IWS at the previous week’s meeting, though it was not scheduled on the agenda to be discussed.

One month later, the Harrison County commissioners agreed to provide a public sponsorship for ISW’s grant application, with the hope that the project would create more jobs for the county and reduce waste being transported by truck, making its way by rail instead.

Two Harrison County commissioners, including current Commissioner Paul Coffland, signed a $22,270 memorandum of understanding saying they support and financially help IWS in its grant application for the rail and gondola project — Cieply said the letter of support was needed for IWS to submit its application. The agreement was met with some backlash from the public, according to The Times Leader.

However, the commissioners were not able to provide a letter of support from the Harrison County commissioners in time for the submission due to a “timing issue,” Coffland said on Monday.

Without a letter of support from a governing body positioning the application more favorably, IWS was not awarded the grant, Cieply said.