A warehouse that collects about 40 million pounds of garbage every year from across Valley County will be out of commission for up to two months this summer.
The closure is expected as part of a $1.9 million project at the Valley County Transfer Site that was awarded earlier this week by Valley County Commissioners.
The work involves repairing and upgrading the existing metal building and adding two new drop-off dumpsters for household waste, Facilities and Solid Waste Director Scott Clingan said.
The transfer site, located at 240 Spink Ln. near Lake Fork, will remain operational through the project. Work is expected to begin in May and be complete by October.
The first phase of the work will build the new drop-off dumpster site for use by customers dumping household garbage. Then, a temporary dumping pad for commercial waste will be used while the warehouse building is closed for repairs.
“The public is going to have to be a little patient with us,” Clingan said. “We’re trying to improve and provide a better service for them.”
Improved efficiency
Once complete, Clingan expects the improvements to increase the transfer site’s efficiency by providing separate drop-off areas for commercial traffic and residential traffic.
“They can just pull it up, throw it in and be on their way,” he said of the two new residential drop-off dumpsters that will be added.
Currently, the warehouse building is where homeowners, contractors, and Lake Shore Disposal, which contracts trash collection services across Valley County, dump trash. In the last two years, the facility has been a conduit for nearly 80 million pounds of trash, or about 20,000 tons per year.
The trash is gradually pushed to the back of the building toward a tipping floor that falls into a lower-level bay where semi-trucks park to be loaded up with the trash, which is then taken to a regional landfill in Payette County.
New scale
The upgrades this summer will add a scale to the loading bay so that drivers no longer need to re-enter the main flow of traffic into the transfer site to weigh loads.
“With a scale down there, they’ll know when they’re loading,” Clingan said. “It makes it more efficient for them.”
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The work will also repair an existing concrete floor that has crumbled to dirt in places, as well as improve safety with a new emergency escape walkway.
Concrete reinforcement walls around the inside of the metal building will also be raised from about four feet currently to about 10 feet, Clingan said.
Future capacity still needed
The $1.9 million project is the first phase of improvements at the transfer site that are needed to keep up with increased demand in recent years. The work is expected to buy five to 10 years of capacity before a more permanent solution is needed, Clingan said.
“The trouble is there’s really no room up here to expand this site,” he said.
The transfer site was established in 1976 and most recently expanded in 2011.
The work this summered is funded by gate fees paid by transfer site users, as well as property taxes paid by Valley County homeowners, who may dump household waste for free, Valley County Clerk Douglas Miller said.
In 2024, the transfer site collected $1.6 million in gate fees, Miller said.
The transfer site is managed by Lake Shore Disposal on a contract with the county. For 2025, the contract is expected to cost about $1.9 million, including curbside collection, hauling to Payette County, and dumping fees paid to the regional landfill.
Lake Shore also contracts with McCall, Donnelly, and Cascade for curbside trash collection service.
The company is owned by Waste Connections, a publicly held corporation that is among the three largest garbage service providers in the United States.
