Graham Jaehnig/Daily Mining Gazette The Houghton County Solid Waste Transfer Station has exceeded its capacity for handling both solid waste and recycling. The County Board is considering potential options for expanding the facility.

HOUGHTON – The Houghton County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved a feasibility study for expanding operations at the county solid waste facility in Adams Township, referred to as the County Transfer Station.

The Board has been considering major capacity and financial challenges at the solid waste and recycling facilities. It has outgrown its current recycling operations, prompting a push for significant upgrades to modernize processing and blunt rising disposal costs.

According to the board, of immediate concern, the county hopes to improve recycling infrastructure by adding a tipping floor for co-mingled recyclables, noting glass recycling requires source separation and is expensive to transport.

Brenden Presnell, materials management plan coordinator with the Western Upper Peninsula Planning Region (WUPPDR), spoke to the Board at a special meeting Thursday morning and presented a proposal for upgrades to the facility, focusing on the addition of a tipping floor.

“As far as what the materials recovery facility in Marquette takes, they can be co-mingled plastics,” Parnell said. “Plastics, cardboard, aluminum cans that aren’t beverage containers, those can all be dumped onto a tipping floor and pushed into a bin like is currently done with the trash compactor.”

The Recycling would be transported to 906, the materials recovery facility located in Marquette, he said.

Presnell told the Board that, in his opinion, Houghton County is in a unique position in terms of recycling, because the transfer station serves a hub for community recycling programs at the municipal level, and could become the recycling hub for the Western Upper Peninsula by becoming a regional collection center.

“I can already tell you that municipalities I’ve spoken with are extremely excited about this prospect,” Presnell said, “because it opens the door for them to actually have have affordable recycling, because they won’t have to haul it all the way to Marquette themselves.”

Presnell also provided an update on the Material Management Plan (MMP) budget. The budget is a funding framework mandated by Michigan’s Part 115 regulations to transition counties from old solid waste disposal systems toward sustainable recycling infrastructure.

A $58,000 EGLE grant is available for the county’s materials management plan, with the primary proposal to fund a feasibility study at the transfer station.

The feasibility study would cover contractual expenses for engineers, architects and attorneys, to assess overall operations, including recycling and composting and plan for future investments.

The feasibility study wil quantify operational requirements, identify funding pathways and gather data to secure furure grants for proposed recycling expansion.

The state provides base funding of $60,000 per year per county during the initial planning phase, plus an additional $10,000 per year incentive for counties collaborating on a multi-county regional plan.

To physically expand and modernize the Houghton County Solid Waste Transfer Station, the county leverages upwards of $450,000 in grant support through the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE). This funding is primarily aimed at constructing a new tipping floor to handle high-volume sorting and recycling.