DPWT presents capital program priorities: landfill expansion, sewer consent‑decree progress and $399M road‑paving gap

Lauren Buckler, director of the Baltimore County Department of Public Works and Transportation (DPWT), briefed the Planning Board subcommittee on Jan. 16 about the department’s capital priorities, infrastructure condition, and data‑driven changes to project selection.

Buckler said DPWT is moving to systematic, data‑driven decision making across highways, utilities and solid waste. For highways, DPWT completed pavement condition assessments of roughly 8,000 road segments using lidar‑based scans and assigned each segment a pavement condition index (PCI) score on a 0–100 scale. Buckler told the board that bringing county roads up to an average PCI in the sixties would require about $399 million in improvements, while annual repaving funding is approximately $11 million. She noted that the cumulative shortfall corresponds to highway user revenues the county did not receive from the state over the last decade.

On solid waste, Buckler described a series of initiatives and limits. The county’s recycling and materials recovery facility (MRF) is near the end of its useful life; DPWT has begun an ARPA‑funded assessment of options. DPWT also launched an organics pilot in January 2024 in Perry Hall serving about 100…