The board of the Emerald Coast Utilities Authority (ECUA), Pensacola, Florida, and the Escambia County (Florida) Board of County Commissioners held a kick-off ceremony to mark the opening of ECUA’s Interim Materials Recycling Facility (IMRF). The event highlights the result of collaborative efforts between ECUA and Escambia County, bringing a MRF to the region that can recycle up to 40,000 tons per year.
The MRF was built at the county’s landfill. The day-to-day operations at the MRF, including marketing of the recyclables, will be handled by California-based Zero Waste Inc.
“Building this partnership has been instrumental in eliminating our reliance on outside contractors for the processing of this region’s recycling effort,” says Steve Sorrell, ECUA executive director. “Now, we can focus on what’s really important: keeping recyclable materials out of the landfills and putting them to good use once again.”
The $10.6 million project was initiated to offer a long-term, regional recycling solution for the county while also assisting Escambia County in reaching its state-mandated 75 percent recycling goal. ECUA broke ground on the IMRF, which is expected to process up to 165 tons of recyclables per day, this past February.
Tom Williams, senior project engineer from the IMRF’s site design firm Baskerville-Donovan Inc. (BDI), says that from the beginning, it was about forecasting what the area’s needs were and creating a facility that would succeed in meeting and exceeding those needs. “This project was a long time coming and – like all of our work at BDI – our mission was to develop a unique, innovative solution that would fill a void we’ve had for a while in ECUA’s recycling program. The IMRF is a necessary investment in this community, and it will continue to be one for years to come.”
Other contractors involved in the IMRF project are Brown Construction, which performed site work; Big Top Inc., which was responsible for building fabrication; Sclease Construction and Management Inc., which handled building construction; Kelson Electric, the electrical contractor; and Bulk Handling Systems, which supplied the sorting and processing equipment.
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