The engineering firm that helped design the new drop-off facility at the Billings landfill will also help with its repairs following a fire that damaged a portion of the building earlier this year.
HDR Engineering will oversee the repairs to the new drop-off facility, which are estimated at $145,000. HDR was the design engineer on the original project, including the drop-off facility, the new maintenance building and the new scale station.
The fire at the drop-off facility erupted in late January in the northwest section of the building where it did the most damage. Flames scored the metal siding on the building, damaged parts of the roof and elements of the facility’s HVAC system.
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Landfill crews had been running a large shredder, grinding down a pile of furniture when the fire started. Bulky items like furniture are broken up and shredded before being placed in the landfill as a way to efficiently utilize space.
While the landfill is still open to the public, the drop-off facility has been closed since the fire.
The drop-off facility opened just over a year ago as part of a $20 million project to improve solid waste management at the landfill and, specific to the drop-off building, to reduce much of the wind-blown garbage that’s long plagued the site.
The idea for an enclosed drop-off center was hatched in 2017 and included the 60,000 square-foot drop-off facility, a 10,000 square-foot maintenance building and new scales. Construction began in 2019 and was finished early last year.
The landfill is also the temporary home of the city’s entire collection of 300-gallon garbage containers, which Billings Public Works recently retired. The containers have been sold to other communities still using that size of garbage container, said Public Works director Debi Meling.
Starting three years ago, Billings began the switch from 300-gallon residential trash containers kept in alleyways to 96-gallon residential containers. The new containers will be used by individual homeowners; the 300-gallon containers were shared across three households.
Roughly one-third of the city was still on the 300-gallon shared container system when the city began the switch. It was an effort to make the city’s trash collection more uniform and was spurred by the need to replace deteriorating containers.
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