Onondaga County residents who used to drop off their trash or recyclables at the Ley Creek Transfer Station in Salina might be wondering what the future holds for the facility after it closed in 2022. The Onondaga County Resource Recovery Agency, which owns the site, is demolishing the old structure and planning a new, larger facility to accommodate the changing waste streams. OCRRA Director of Engineering Cristina Albunio said they also have to meet state regulations that require collection and sorting to be done indoors.
“If you've ever come to Ley Creek before, a lot of our operations were done outside," Albunio said. "So this is going to be a much bigger building where all of the operations can be done inside to better protect the environment and also give the system a lot more space to operate so that we can segregate, recycle and recover more material from the waste streams.”
Albunio said OCRRA also recently purchased about 11 acres of adjacent land with hopes of building a separate facility to handle batteries, household hazardous waste, electronics, film plastics, and other hard-to-handle items. She said those materials are currently accepted by various retailers and at special collection drives.
“Right now it's really difficult for people to know where to go and what to bring there," Albunio said. "By having one location, it'll make it much more accessible to drop off hard-to-recycle materials, make it easier for the community, and then more efficient for our system to really quantify what we're recycling and do more of that.”
Albunio says those plans are still several years away and require numerous permits and other approvals.
Right now, she says they remain focused on restoring the current footprint and finalizing the design of the new transfer station. Salina Town Supervisor Nick Paro said he's eager for it to reopen because the facility generates economic activity.
"It drives a lot of traffic to this area, which is extremely important in the 7th North St. corridor," Paro said. "We have restaurants here, we have some gas stations here. We have other businesses that while they're over here stopping at the transfer station, maybe they'll be able to stop at and continue to drive revenue to those businesses. So we're excited to see this redevelopment take place."
OCRRA said they're planning for a 2028 reopening. Until then, residents and haulers are taking their materials to the Rock Cut Road station in Jamesville, which was overhauled and back in business in 2022.
