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Monday, April 04, 2011
Work starts on S. Valley recycling site
By Elaine D. Briseño
Journal Staff Writer
Residents in the Mountain View area of the South Valley will soon get a new neighbor.
Waste Management recently broke ground on a recycling center and transfer station it plans to build near the corner of Broadway and Murray. The company will use the station to increase its recycling capabilities and it will also be available to the public.
The $30 million Mountain View Ecostation is expected to open later this year or in early 2012 and bring 20 "good-paying" jobs to the area, according to Alberto Guardado, director of operations for Waste Management New Mexico.
"We are looking to hire locally," he said. "We will hold hiring fairs at the location to encourage local people to apply."
Bernalillo County Commissioner Art De La Cruz said although it's not as many jobs as he would like to see created in the South Valley, it's still a good thing.
"This is more jobs and more opportunity for the South Valley," he said. "That's important to me."
Waste Management has landfills in Rio Rancho and Valencia County and provides trash services for residents in Bernalillo County, Los Ranchos, Rio Rancho, Bernalillo, Belen, Bosque Farms and parts of Valencia County.
There are more than 30 such Waste Management plants around the country, but this is the first one in the Albuquerque metro area.
Hundreds of high-paying jobs were lost in September when the GE Aviation plant in the South Valley closed up shop. Guardado said there will be temporary construction jobs while the ecostation is being built.
Later phases of the project, which have no construction date yet, will include adding an education center, building a maintenance center and expanding either the recycling center or transfer station, depending on where there is the greatest need, Guardado said.
The education center will give visitors a chance to view a live feed of the recycling taking place and to read literature about the process. Guardado said the hope is that the education could be used a destination for local school groups.
The station has the capacity to process more than 2,000 tons of recyclable materials each month, which is double what the company can now process. Currently, Guardado said, Waste Management sends its recycled materials to other locations for processing.
The ecostation will increase recycling opportunities for commercial and rural customers, he said, and also the types of materials the company can recycle.
"We want to promote more recycling and we hope the center will do that," Guardado said. "The more materials we can keep from going to the landfill, the more we can extend the life of those landfills."
He said the Rio Rancho site has only 10 years of life left.
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