This story by Jason Starr was first published by the Williston Observer on April 11.
The cost of Chittenden County’s new recycling center will be nearly $5 million more than what was estimated when voters approved a $22 million bond for the project in 2022.
Chittenden Solid Waste District (CSWD) administrators are scaling back the scope of the project in an attempt to mitigate the cost overrun. CSWD Executive Director Sarah Reeves pointed to the increased cost of steel, concrete, asphalt and excavating compared to when the project was first budgeted in 2021 as the reason for the overrun.
“We just happened to catch it at the peak of pricing,” Reeves said in a January meeting of the CSWD Board of Directors, referring to construction cost inflation, which she noted has since leveled off.
The new recycling center is built to handle 150 times the amount of material that the current facility on Avenue C in Williston processes, CSWD Director of Compliance and Hazardous Waste Josh Estey said in a February hearing with the Williston Development Review Board. The new center is sited on a 36-acre parcel on Redmond Road, near CSWD’s Williston drop-off center and composting headquarters. It is being built for a decades-long horizon of residential and commercial growth with flexibility to handle evolving product packaging, using an automated process that replaces the human sorters the current recycling center relies on.
“This project is needed, not just for Chittenden County but for the state,” Reeves said.
CSWD leadership has reduced the building size, changed the construction of the roof, narrowed the width of the access road and paused a planned community room to chip away at the cost overrun. They are also continuing to search for government grants and loans to close the gap. But Reeves said the organization, which is funded primarily by the 18 municipalities it serves, can cover the cost overrun with its own reserve funds. She also said doing so may lead to an increase in trash collection fees, which have remained flat for the past 12 years, to replenish reserves.
“Anything that makes it more expensive to live in Chittenden County and run a business in Chittenden County I know I’m personally not for,” said Williston’s representative on the CSWD board, Kelton Bogasky. “I don’t take that lightly, raising any fees that we charge.”
The Development Review Board gave the project preliminary approval in February. A final hearing with the DRB is scheduled for April 23. In the February hearing, engineer Greg Dixson of Colchester-based Krebs & Lansing Consulting Engineers said the 68,000-square-foot facility would attract about 80 truck trips a day on Redmond Road between the operating hours of 6 a.m. and 3:30 p.m.
Architect AES Northeast of Plattsburgh, N.Y., has designed the building. The CSWD has issued a request for proposals from companies to bid on constructing the project. Bids are due by April 26. The district hopes to have a construction company chosen by the end of May.
