Case Studies

Project Background

Historically, the City has relied on its franchised hauler to provide collection, transfer, processing, and disposal services ─ a situation that may limit the City’s options for contractors and the best pricing for its ratepayers.  The City owns a site that may be a suitable location for development of a transfer station or organics processing facility. In 2017-18, as part of a long-range strategic planning process, HF&H prepared a schematic design and construction cost estimate for a transfer facility. The City recognizes the potential benefits of owning its own transfer facility and the opportunity to perform some organics preprocessing or processing at the site as well; however, it wanted to better understand the long-term financial benefits, if any, of such a facility. 

To evaluate the economics of the City facility option, the City engaged HF&H and its subcontractor, HDR, to conduct additional analysis. HF&H developed a financial model to project annual costs over a 15-year period (2025 through 2039) for various combinations of transfer, processing, and disposal facilities. Numerous facility scenarios modeled reliance on a City transfer station with private sector processing and disposal facilities, and other scenarios modeled reliance on private sector facilities for transfer, processing, and disposal. HF&H efforts included a benchmark rate study for transfer, recycling, organics, and disposal facilities in the region ─ information that was critical to the financial modeling. HDR supported the facility feasibility study by reviewing and updating a prior planning-level construction cost estimate and preparing transfer facility operation cost estimates. In addition, HDR evaluated the potential of developing various organics pre-processing and processing options at the City’s site.

Project Results

The financial feasibility report and organics processing study will be presented to the City Council at the end of May and will provide the basis for the City’s decision on whether or not to proceed with development of a transfer facility, a transfer facility with organics pre-processing capabilities, or an organics processing facility.