City of Auburn asks for further review of King County Solid Waste Transfer and Waste Management Plan, says neither proposed transfer station site in Auburn is appropriate

The City of Auburn has asked King County to conduct another assessment of its transfer system plan. The plan was recently reviewed by the county’s Solid Waste Division, which concluded that a transfer station in South King County should proceed as originally planned in 2006.

“The City urges King County to conduct further evaluation of the Solid Waste Management Plan before spending tens to hundreds of millions of dollars . . . [on a plan] that plugs a state of the art facility into an outdated solid waste handling system and strategy,” Auburn officials said in a letter to the Solid Waste Division.

The letter — signed by Mayor Nancy Backus, Assistant Director of Community Development Jeff Tate, City Attorney Daniel Held, and Director of Finance Shelley Coleman — said the county approached its recent review “with a foregone conclusion that a new solid waste handling facility is required, since the choices are limited to build or not to build, that the only solution is a one size fits all approach to transfer station, and . . . it fails to incorporate any innovative approaches. A more genuine approach would have been to allow an outside audit of the report.”

Among the deficiencies in the report highlighted in the letter:

• “Of the various alternatives described there is no reference to an option of retaining, renovating or expanding the Algona facility to serve as something more than a self-haul facility.”
• “The report does not address the need for 24 of the other 37 cities in King County to embrace mandatory garbage and recycling services.”
• “The guiding principles of the report fail to include the need to incorporate social and environmental justice when deciding in which community to locate a facility.”

The letter also stated that neither of the two proposed sites within the city limits are acceptable to the City. “Both sites proposed in Auburn present significant potential harm to the City of Auburn, its residents and businesses, the community’s quality of life, the natural environment, utilities, roads, traffic, the local economy, property values, and flood detention. . . . [A]dditional consideration should be given to other properties within the region that are far more appropriate.”

Read the complete letter here (beginning on page 6).