Apex Landfill moves forward with scaled-back rail project

The owner of the Apex Landfill in Amsterdam, Ohio, is moving forward with a scaled-back rail expansion plan after its initial project was shut down last year.

As reported by the Herald-Star, an Interstate Waste Services (IWS) executive says that the original project would have created more rail tracks at Apex’s existing facility, allowing the landfill to stage waste-filled rail cars at its own facility rather than in railyards in surrounding communities like Mingo Junction.

“We were trying to reduce the amount of any trains or cars holding our material in Mingo and support the staging of it at the landfill where we can control it better,” says David Cieply, executive president of landfill operations for IWS.

He added that the project would not have expanded the landfill’s total area of operation or increased the amount of tonnage the landfill is permitted to accept on a given day.

The project failed to gain traction because of a lack of support from Jefferson County commissioners, which later contributed to IWS not receiving a grant for the project, the Herald-Star reports.

The company is now continuing only part of the original project—a gondola offloading building that is set to be completed by mid-2024 and paid for by IWS.

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“[The project] doesn’t expand our track, it just provides another facility that enables us to unload gondolas,” Cieply says.

Development of the gondola building costs $15 million. Once operational, the facility will add between 10 and 15 new jobs to the landfill, which currently employs more than 140 individuals.

Currently, Apex accepts 20-foot wide, 8-foot high and 12-foot high steel containers that are sealed on the outside and filled with waste material, Cieply tells the Herald-Star.

The open-faced gondolas can carry construction and demolition debris, Cieply says, but municipal solid waste must be covered with something “other than just a tarp,” such as a spray-applied mortar that solidifies on top of the waste and prevents the escape of material and odors until it is broken by an excavator.

“We’re doing everything … environmentally compliant, as we always will do,” Cieply says, noting that IWS’s later hope for Mingo Junction is to have waste staged in the community for as little time as possible.

Mingo Junction’s railyard is the transfer location between Norfolk Southern trains from New Jersey and the Ohio Central Railroad System, which brings container cars back and forth from Apex.