Closing of Campbell County landfill has some area garbage collectors worried

The plan to close the Campbell County landfill on July 1 and switch to a regional trash operation stinks to one local trash collector.

Ray Roakes will have an extra 20-mile round trip every time his company Rustburg Trash Removal hauls off garbage.

His customers all live within a short drive from the Livestock Road landfill. He collects garbage three days a week, making six to eight trips to the landfill.

Now that the county will use the Lynchburg landfill on Concord Turnpike, and since businesses can’t use the county’s convenience stations, some of that has to change.

“I’ve got to drastically change how I operate,” Roakes said. “To continue doing this, I’m going to have to buy a different truck.”

Roakes said a bigger truck would help him reduce repeat trips. He’s delaying that purchase by building up the size of his current truck, using wooden boards to make it taller.

He doesn’t want to raise the price to his customers, he said.

In the southern corners of the county, the towns of Altavista and Brookneal are stretching their budgets to continue providing trash collection services.

Brookneal currently charges $15 to $150 per month for business trash, said Michael Crews, Brookneal public works director.

He said right now those fees would stay the same. “It’s something that the mayor or council will have to look at, whether they want to leave them where they are, or change them because of … having to travel so far.”

In Altavista, trash pickup is free for small businesses, and larger businesses contract with private haulers, said Town Manager Waverly Coggsdale.

He said the town had to calculate extra travel costs and extra employee time in its budget for the next fiscal year.

But Coggsdale thinks the increased costs to the town might be worth the county’s savings.

“I (also) am a county taxpayer, so I’m glad it’s going to save them money,” he said.

Campbell County expects to save $700,000 to $1 million per year in the long term thanks to the regional landfill operation, according to David Laurrell, county administrator.

Officials at Region 2000 and in local governments, including Laurrell, have pursued the regional landfill plan to cut overhead costs.

The county landfill will eventually open again, once the Concord Turnpike Regional Landfill is full in about five years. The Region 2000 Services Authority plans to then operate the Livestock Road landfill until it is full, about eight years later.

After that, the authority plans to either open a new landfill or explore other options for waste disposal.

To Roakes, not knowing where the landfill will be later on is worrisome.

“What about the next guy who picks up the garbage? Is he going to have to drive to Nelson County, or to Appomattox, or to Bedford County?” Roakes said. “We’re talking 15 years down the road, but right now he has to drive 10 miles. Then you might have to drive 25.”

Laurrell said that in the real long term, the picture looks much better, even if the drive looks longer.

“Our savings are in the future. They’re not yesterday or the day before. They’re going forward,” he said. “It’s a tremendous economy of scale … involved here.”

He said the regional landfill will not have to increase tipping fees — the per-ton charge for businesses bringing in trash — as much as the county would have to in the future.

“That’s going to offset whatever the additional transportation costs are going to be,” he said.

Other businesses are concerned less about the drive but more about wait times.

Ray Roakes’ brother Doug owns All Roof and Repairs in Lynchburg. He said it’s not uncommon to spend an hour at the landfill to drop off old shingles.

Much of that time is spent waiting in line to get weighed going in or out, he said.

Doug Roakes said he fears the wait could be longer when the whole region uses one landfill.

“It’s going to be a mess. I hope to think that they’ve already got it cured before it goes on there,” he said.

Clarke Gibson, solid waste director for the Region 2000 Services Authority, said the landfill would have two scale operators — one for the inbound scale and one for the outbound — during busy hours.

He also said the Services Authority has received the go-ahead to use a new cell at the Lynchburg landfill. That should create more room to maneuver vehicles around and speed things up, he said.