Charleston County’s tons of daily garbage end up at the Bees Ferry Landfill in West Ashley, where a nearly $19 million project could soon be underway to quadruple the landfill’s capacity and extend the number of years until it’s essentially full.
Every year about 200,000 tons of waste are hauled to the landfill, and there’s only room left for about one million tons more — five years’ capacity. The county doesn’t have a second landfill, but has been looking for a potential site.
Preparing the last of six permitted “cells” at the landfill — the highly engineered spaces where waste goes — and refurbishing an existing one will add capacity for another three million tons, said Thomas Cue, the county’s director of environmental management. “With the new project coming, with that put in, we’ll have right around 20 years” until the landfill runs out of space, Cue said. He hopes that eventually, new emerging waste management alternatives and practices will eliminate the need for a second landfill…