At a pre-council meeting, four possibilities were presented to the Columbia City Council on restarting recycling after a tornado destroyed the city鈥檚 Material Recovery Facility. The options are to rebuild it on one of three landfill property locations or to transfer recyclables to another city. The options were presented by Kate Vasquez of RRT Design & Construction, the company consulting on the project.
During the meeting, Mayor Barbara Buffaloe brought up concerns about how the options can even be compared since exact finances have not been determined. The recycling facility already needed to be replaced before it was destroyed. Financial estimates for replacing it were made before the tornado, so they include some inapplicable costs, like demolition, said Erin Keys, director of Columbia Utilities.
The three possibilities for rebuilding the recycling facility include: The existing site: This would require finishing clearing the existing site, which Keys said was 鈥渟ubstantially complete.鈥� Vasquez said this option is the most expeditious of the three rebuild possibilities.