Washington County, Maryland Solid Waste
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WASHINGTON COUNTY, MARYLAND SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT & RECYCLING PLAN 2022-2031 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 BACKGROUND 2 CHAPTER 1: COUNTY GOALS, OBJECTIVES, POLICIES AND PROGRAMS 4 I. CHAPTER OVERVIEW 5 II. GOALS, OBJECTIVES AND POLICIES ESTABLISHED BY THIS PLAN 5 iii. CONFORMANCE WITH LOCAL, STATE AND REGIONAL PLANS 8 IV. COUNTY GOVERNMENT STRUCTURE IN RELATION TO SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT 9 V. AGENCIES, LAWS AND REGULATIONS AFFECTING SOLID WASTE 11 CHAPTER 2: OVERVIEW OF COUNTY POPULATION AND EMPLOYMENT CHARACTERISTICS, COMPREHENSIVE PLAN, ZONING REGULATIONS, MUNICIPALITIES, AND FEDERAL FACILITIES 17 I. CHAPTER OVERVIEW 18 II. INTRODUCTION 18 III. MUNICIPALITIES 19 IV. FEDERAL FACILITIES 19 V. PROJECTIONS 21 VI. EMPLOYMENT 21 VII. CURRENT STATUS OF THE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN 23 VIII. WASHINGTON COUNTY ZONING ORDINANCE 25 CHAPTER 3: EXISTING SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM 26 i. EXISTING SOLID WASTE GENERATION IN WASHINGTON COUNTY OVERVIEW 27 II. CURRENT WASTE GENERATION SNAPSHOT 28 III. EXISTING SOLID WASTE GENERATION BY CATEGORY 31 IV. WASTE IMPORTED AND EXPORTED 37 V. REFUSE COLLECTION SYSTEMS IN WASHINGTON COUNTY 38 VI. EXISTING SOLID WASTE REFUSE FACILITIES 39 VII. WASTE STREAM PROJECTIONS 46 CHAPTER 4: SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM ASSESSMENT AND ALTERNATIVES 47 I. ASSESSMENT OF SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT ALTERNATIVES 48 II. WASTE REDUCTION 49 III. LAND DISPOSAL 54 IV. SOURCE SEPARATION/RECYCLING 59 V. WASTE UTILIZATION AND ENERGY RECOVERY ALTERNATIVES 65 CHAPTER 5: SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT AND RECYCLING PLAN OF ACTION 80 i. INTRODUCTION 81 APPENDICES 101 Washington County, MD Solid Waste Management & Recycling Plan I. INTRODUCTION A. Plan Purpose and Organization The purpose of this document is to outline Washington County’s existing and future plans for solid waste management in compliance with State and Federal regulations. This document, and the public outreach that preceded its adoption, also serve as a link to inform local citizens about the County’s plans for an essential public service. Current State regulations (COMAR 26.03.03) require local governments to prepare plans that address solid waste management for a ten-year period. Solid waste management plans must also be reviewed and updated every three years. The current Washington County Solid Waste Management Plan, which covers the period of 2022-2031, was adopted by the County on ____________ and approved by the Maryland Department of the Environment on ____________. The Plan is divided into five chapters in accordance with the COMAR requirements noted above. The first chapter presents the Federal, State and local legal and institutional framework that governs solid waste management in Washington County and establishes the County’s goals and objectives for this type of land use. Chapter 2 presents an overview of the demographic trends which affect the County’s waste generation, summarizes zoning regulations pertaining to solid waste facilities and describes the intent of the County’s current Comprehensive Plan. Chapter 3 describes the current solid waste management system operating in the County and presents data on solid waste trends and projections. Chapter 4 contains an assessment of the current solid waste management system and evaluates the need for and feasibility of alternatives to current collection, processing and disposal technologies. Chapter 5 presents an actionable plan for addressing solid waste during the ten-year period based upon the system evaluation in Chapter 4, including a schedule for implementation. B. Plan Approval Process Plan preparation was performed by the Department of Planning and Zoning in consultation with the Department of Solid Waste and Recycling. Input was also gained from the Washington County Environmental Management Advisory Committee and a copy of the plan was routed to several outside agencies including the Health Department for their review and comment. A draft version of the Plan was also submitted to the Maryland Department of Environment (MDE) for a preliminary review. Opportunities for public comment on the plan were offered through a variety of methods, including a public hearing held on ____ in accordance with Section 9-503 of the Annotated Code of Maryland’s Environment Article. The public hearing was advertised in a newspaper of general circulation at least 14 days prior to the hearing. Notice of the hearing was also posted on the County’s website with a link to the proposed plan. Revisions were made to the document in response to feedback from all the above entities. C. Statement of Certification This Plan is certified to have been prepared in accordance with COMAR 26.03.03. 1 Washington County, MD Solid Waste Management & Recycling Plan D. Summary of Major Plan Updates This Plan has been updated in numerous respects since the last major update to the Solid Waste and Recycling Plan occurred in 2014, aside from those amendments which have been made since 2014 in the aftermath of new State Legislation. Principally, goals, objectives and action items have been oriented to and organized according to the Solid Waste Management Hierarchy that includes methods of waste treatment ranging from source reduction to waste disposal. In addition, there is a greater range of potential waste management solutions discussed and proposed for further study and/or implementation within Chapter 4 and Chapter 5. The 2011 Plan and 2014 updates were heavily oriented to the waste-to-energy facility that Washington County was jointly pursuing at the time with Frederick and Carroll Counties. That project ultimately did not come to fruition, which negatively affected many of the stated intentions imbedded within the prior Plan. Accordingly, this Plan provides a more open-ended list of options, many of which have been given recent extensive study by the County’s Environmental Management Advisory Committee, within Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 that may be pursued by the County if promising opportunities arise to do so. The intent in doing so is to provide greater flexibility, both within scope of study undertaken within this Plan, and in its actual implementation under the constraints imposed by fiscal realities, changing material markets and many other factors. II. BACKGROUND Solid waste, as defined in Section 9-101 of the Environment Article, Annotated Code of Maryland, refers to “any garbage, refuse, sludge, or liquid from industrial, commercial, mining, or agricultural operations or from community activities.” Solid waste management describes an integrated system of activities which provide for the collection, source separation, storage, transportation, transfer, processing, treatment, re-use, or disposal of solid waste. The timely, cost-efficient and environmentally sound provision of these services by public and private solid waste management entities is an outgrowth of long-range planning to meet this essential community need. Washington County first developed its solid waste plan in 1979. Updates have occurred several times in the years since the original plan was written, most recently to comply with SB 370, passed by the State Legislature in 2019, concerning recycling in office buildings. Due to a range of factors, solid waste management has become increasingly complex since the first Federal legislation to address the issue was passed in 1965. Environmental regulations at the Federal and State level have become stricter over the succeeding decades as measures to protect public health have broadened to include mitigating the impacts of an increasing range of pollutant or waste types. Citizen opposition to the siting of traditional solid waste disposal facilities, such as landfills, has grown due to concerns over impacts to neighboring communities and natural resources. Industry changes to the collection, processing and disposal of solid waste have also led to increasing volumes being exported to regional waste management facilities. These facilities are often operated by private entities that are subject to less stringent regulations and offer highly competitive rates for services that compete with those provided by public entities. While local governments wrestle with such challenges, the volume of solid waste continues to grow proportionally in response to population growth, economic trends, technological innovation and improvements to standards of living that result in greater material consumption. 2 Washington County, MD Solid Waste Management & Recycling Plan Under those circumstances, the need to look beyond solid waste management practices which have previously met our needs for generations, has led local jurisdictions to look at alternative methods by which to deal with solid waste. To that end, it’s useful to understand that waste management constitutes a hierarchy of strategies by which to deal with solid waste. Most people are familiar with the simplified version of this hierarchy, which progresses from reduce, to reuse to recycle. This hierarchy is expanded upon in the figure below from the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). As is evident from this image, the disposal of solid waste in a facility such as a landfill represents an, often necessary, but much less preferred technique for dealing with waste products. If feasible, more preferred techniques should be pursued such as source reduction in manufacturing processes, product reuse, recycling waste into raw materials that can be remanufactured into new products and the recovery of energy from non-recyclable material through various waste-to-energy processes. These