Clark County advances broad site-screening for new transfer station; rail not required but will be considered

Clark County staff presented an initial broad-area screening and programming plan for a proposed regional transfer station, saying the work will narrow roughly 15 candidate areas to a smaller set for closer study and public engagement.

The county’s project lead, Mike (last name not specified), said the screening will use siting criteria that factor in regulatory, operational and environmental considerations and that prime agricultural land is treated as a pass/fail criterion: parcels identified as prime agriculture are excluded from the screening. “We plan to complete the broad area site screening in December and January and then move on to more outreach,” Mike said during the meeting.

County staff and several committee members discussed transportation options for moving trash and recyclables from the transfer station to processors and disposal sites. Mike said the county plans to design for existing barge operations and short truck hauls and that rail “is not ruled out,” but that rail led to operational reliability concerns. “Rail is unreliable, and the industry is moving away from it,” Mike said. He said rail might be considered only if a suitable rail hub or spur exists near a chosen site.

Representatives from private haulers and industry urged the county to evaluate rail in the siting criteria. Josh Brown of Waste Connections said rail has been discussed by the industry for moving recyclable commodities to higher-return markets, and urged the county to include proximity-to-rail as a scored criterion. A SWAC member who said he had transloader experience added that rail can create a bottleneck if shipments are time-sensitive.

Will Elder, environmental services manager at the City of Vancouver, said Metro (Portland-area) evaluated trucking and rail and prioritized trucking for on-time delivery; he urged the county to weigh environmental impacts alongside costs. Lori (no last name given), a county staffer, noted that a transfer station can still make use of rail without a spur through intermodal yards and short-haul trucking to a railhead.

Mike said the project team will circulate the draft siting criteria and programming to committee members for comment and expected public information workshops to shift from the previously discussed August–September window to a September–November timeline. “We'd like to see if you do have comments. If you can get them back to us in a couple of weeks, we'd appreciate that,” he said.

The project lead emphasized that the siting process is lengthy and iterative: even after narrowing to five candidate sites, some or all may later be ruled out by environmental review, transportation impacts, or community concerns. Staff said focused public engagement will follow the broad-area screening so outreach effort can be targeted to communities that are most likely affected.

The committee asked for clearer and earlier public-engagement milestones and for the county to present cost‑benefit comparisons of transport modes (truck, barge, rail) once candidate sites are identified; staff agreed to include those analyses in later rounds of outreach and to share the siting criteria with SWAC members for comment.

The county will post the siting materials and a project web page and will notify SWAC members when the comment window opens.