Tim Walker
AMR Reporter
The December 17 Special Meeting of the Pocahontas County Solid Waste Authority (SWA) began with a questionable motion to allow Jacob and Malinda Meck, owners of Allegheny Disposal LLC, to sit in on an Executive Session.
Pocahontas County Commission President John Rebinski and Marlinton Mayor Sam Felton were excluded from the executive session and left the courthouse before the meeting was called back into session.
Being questionable or not, the Executive Session did seem to be very productive. When the meeting returned to open session after about an hour, both the SWA members and the Mecks were all smiles.
Several very significant motions were then passed. The first one was to deny Allegheny Disposal’s application for a Certificate of Site Approval, although Jacob Meck did not seem upset by this. Meck had filed that application which would have allowed his company to handle the SWA’s solid waste at the proposed transfer station his company had been planning to build in Green Bank. Following the closed session, however, it became apparent that a Transfer Station in Green Bank is no longer being considered.
The next two motions passed by the SWA were to keep their existing Commercial Solid Waste Facility Siting plan and their already existing Comprehensive Litter and Solid Waste Control Plan. Both of those, originally approved by the SWA last fall, would have needed to be withdrawn and new ones submitted if the SWA still intended to use Meck’s Transfer Station in Green Bank. Both of these currently pending plans are for locating a transfer station at the county landfill. The passage of those motions indicated that as a result of the discussions during the executive Session, the current plan is to build a transfer station at the landfill. Who will build and/or operate that transfer station remains unclear at this time.
They next passed a motion to form a committee to consider establishing a public/ private partnership between the SWA and Allegheny Disposal LLC. They also appointed SWA member David McLaughlin and SWA Office Administrator Mary Clendenen to serve on that committee.
Immediately after approving those motions, they adjourned the meeting.
