Kingston waste station to shut down

Published 12:00 am Sunday, October 30, 2005

NATCHEZ &8212; It doesn&8217;t have to go home, but it can&8217;t stay here.

That will soon be the message Adams County residents will find waiting for them at the Kingston waste transfer station.

The current three-acre site, located on Kingston Road near Ogden Road, has been sold to a Baton Rouge businessman for use as hunting land, a deal that takes effect Nov. 13, Supervisor Henry Watts said this week.

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Watts, whose District 2 includes the Kingston area in south Adams County, said the landowner &8212; whose name he couldn&8217;t recall &8212; wanted the county to pay $10,000 an acre to keep the site, a figure Watts called &8220;just outrageous.&8221;

The result is that supervisors have less than one month to find a new site, or south Adams County residents will have to carry their debris and household garbage to the Foster Mound transfer station in north Adams County or wait for once-a-week garbage service to carry them off.

Citizens can also carry appliances to the transfer stations. There, the freon is removed from the appliances, which are then stored in a corner of the sites and carried away about every six months.

&8220;We&8217;re hoping someone will donate land for a new station,&8221; Watts said.

Establishing such station to temporarily store waste doesn&8217;t require any type of permit from the Mississippi Department of the Environmental Quality, according to Mark Williams, head of the DEQ&8217;s Solid Waste Planning, Policy and Grants Branch.

Obviously, the county would have to provide for the removal of any waste &8212; garbage, debris, appliances and so on &8212; from the current site before the sale of the land takes effect Nov. 13.

But meanwhile, the DEQ &8220;will work with the county in any way we can to find a solution&8221; to the problem of finding a new temporary storage site, Williams said.

One thing DEQ would not allow the county to do would be to permanently dispose of any waste, even yard debris, on property other than a Class 2 rubbish site, such as the Sibley landfill, Williams said. That means simply disposing of limbs and the like in a hole on someone&8217;s property, even with the property owner&8217;s consent, isn&8217;t an option.

But whether the county has to purchase a site or can find a donated one, Watts said he&8217;d like supervisors to sign a lease for the site, something he said wasn&8217;t done when the county opened the Kingston site. The transfer station was opened several years ago, according to County Administrator Charles Brown.

&8220;We need a lease to protect the county&8217;s interests,&8221; Watts said.