Crews working on the construction of the Polk County Transfer Station have experienced a wide range of weather delays from lightning and high winds to snow and ice this past week. But progress is still being made, the new front parking lot and drop-off area was recently opened and will be painted next week. “It’s not going as fast as the county or the contractors
wanted,” said Polk County Environmental Services Administrator Jon Steiner. “It seems like the weather is doing everything it can to try to impede us, but we’re making progress and we’ll get there.”
The contractors were able to open the front lot this week and plans are for that to get painted next week. The ceiling panels, insulation, and roof should see a good amount of progress by the end of next week. “The building crew will start to split here to finish the roof and get the walls up,” said Steiner. “The goal is to get out of the elements by opening the tip floor portion of the facility in the next few weeks.”
Steiner also said that while the tip floor will have roughly the same footprint, the fact the entire facility’s ceiling will be over 30 feet high provides a lot more space for creating piles. The new facility also has a scale that Polk County trucks can be backed onto and loaded below the tip floor level. The staff will be able to know the exact weight of a load in real time and it will eliminate trucks leaving the facility underweight. Steiner estimated that they will save one of every seven loads that the county took out from the transfer station to their other facilities without a scale inside the station, such as the incinerator or landfill.
The office area meanwhile is going to need some additional time to open. Steiner says the staff will be expecting to spend part of the winter operating out the trailer but would hope to move into the new office portion of the facility shortly in late December or early January.
An aerial view of the new Polk County Transfer Station
