Text Transcript -- Shoreline Transfer Station

(Intro music)

(Bob Ferguson) This is King County Conversations. I’m Bob Ferguson and I represent District 1 on the King County Council.

(Ocean Sounds)

Ocean waves greet visitors at the entrance to the newly remodeled Shoreline Recycling and Transfer Station.

This transfer station, which reopened on February 16, is the first in the nation to be registered with the United States Green Building Council and its’ remodel is one aspect of King County’s larger effort to reduce our region’s ecological footprint.

To guide this effort, I recently sponsored an ordinance that will require nearly all county capital projects to use sustainable building practices as defined by the US Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design or LEED specifications. The LEED certification process is the nation-wide standard for assessing the environmental impact of construction projects. Buildings are given a rating of certified, silver, gold, or platinum based upon the qualities of sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection, and indoor environmental quality.

The Shoreline Transfer Station was closed for over a year while construction crews rebuilt the building to a LEED gold standard. It features a rain water reservoir, a natural ventilation system, and solar panels on the roof. It’s most impressive feature, however, may be that it protects nearby Thornton Creek. With the construction of bio-swales to slow water and native plants to filter contaminants, the Shoreline transfer station illustrates that industry can operate without disturbing its surrounding natural habitat.

(Janet Way) “This site is going to make a big difference in improving the water quality downstream. And we appreciate working with the county and the city together to get a better viable creek,”

(Bob) That was Janet Way, a Shoreline City Councilmember who is active with the Thornton Creek Legal Defense Fund.

In addition to being an environmentally friendly building, the transfer station also includes three times more recycling capacity, and a more versatile sorting floor to meet the changing disposal needs of North King County’s residents.

Steve Goldstein, who worked as an advisor on this project, has witnessed a shift in the philosophy of waste disposal over the years.

(Steve Goldstein) “it used to be that, transfer stations were just to move garbage and now they’re built with a lot of flexibility, so you see these big flat floors because basically in the future we don’t know what we’re going to do with them. It might be garbage, it might be recyclables, it might be green waste that gets composted, so you need a lot of flexibility, as a result we build these big flat floors that give it to you. Transfer stations used to have a bin where you’d put the garbage in. You couldn’t do anything other than load garbage in them.”

(Bob) The station’s opening ceremony was attended by the public, Shoreline community leaders, waste disposal experts, and elected officials. Visitors were given a tour of the facility and observed the details of the new disposal systems. For example, upon entry to the transfer station employees will inspect your load and direct you to the appropriate offloading area. Unlike conventional transfer stations, the public will not offload their garbage in the same area as the solid waste trucks.

(Ocean Sounds fade back in)

In addition to the nuts and bolts of the station; artwork, such as these ocean sounds, was also on display at the opening ceremony.

Jim Kelly is the director of 4culture, the County’s cultural services agency.

(Jim Kelly) “people think about public art, ‘what do you do public art at a transfer station for,’ and all the public art that’s done at a transfer station is about environmental stewardship. It’s to get people to think about what they throw away and what they no longer need. There’s going to be a great photograph………of Mt. Rainier with the Cedar Hills landfill in the foreground, and it’s to get people to think, when you throw things into the Transfer Station, most of us think, “it’s gone, I’m done with it’. But it’s not gone; it has to go somewhere else. Those landfills fill up. So we want people, when they come to the transfer station to dispose of things they no longer need, to start to think about what they are disposing of and maybe get a little more conscious of how they use things and recycle things, and what they buy and what they need to throw away, so that we’re not all awash in garbage in 20 years.

(Bob) I appreciate the citizens groups and advisory boards who played a role in the planning and construction of this building. The Shoreline Transfer Station, along with other capital projects, will make King County a national example for habitat protection and energy efficiency.

(Theme music fades back in)

If you have any questions or concerns about this or any other issue, I encourage you to contact me at bob.ferguson@kingcounty.gov.

The Shoreline Transfer Station is located on 2300 N 165th Street, just off of Meridian Avenue in Shoreline.

The music featured in this program was by the Seattle based group, Pocket Change.