July 7, 2026 Environmental Committee - Jul 07, 2026
meeting
Fairfax County Board Committees
1h 2m
6 speakers
8 agenda items
transcribed 1 day ago
official recording ↗
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What agenda item is the Environmental Committee focusing on in this meeting?
All right, good morning. I am Supervisor Palachuk, and we are here for our 11 a.m. Environmental Committee meeting. This will be a very, should be a pretty brief meeting. We have only one agenda item, and that is our Solid Waste Management Update. As many of you are aware, we have some issues and issues and issues to deal with both in the FY28 budget as well as FY29. So I appreciate that Chris Harrington and his team are here today to discuss the options and what is being looked at for the next few years. Chris, take it away.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Christopher Harrington, Director of Public Works and Environmental Services. So our focus here today is really to talk about our hauling operation. So it is our refuse disposal fund. It's 40150 is the number of the fund if you're following along at home. And so we've raised some issues. I'll go back through them. And then we'll present our plan for the next several fiscal years to address our financial challenges. Just for clarification purposes, we're not talking about trash collection. So we're not talking about hands-on cans for today's conversation. That is operationally and fiscally separate from our hauling operation. And as we have previously briefed the board, and just to remind the viewing public, as we discussed in March,
We are not pursuing the countywide unified sanitary district model for collection. So we are effectively status quo for trash collection into the foreseeable future. We are going to explore some potential improvements thanks to some feedback we had through Supervisor Herdy and Supervisor Jimenez hosting a forum for our private haulers and through some of the feedback that we've gotten from the board. to ground us, again, on our refuse disposal fund. Primarily, the purpose of this is the operation of our transfer station at I-66 at the West Docks complex to receive almost 600,000 tons of waste annually, and then move that waste over the road down to the reweld facility in Lorton, where it is incinerated and then the ash is disposed of in the county's ash monofil at I-95.
Our fund 40150 additionally is where we pay for the diversion, the free to the community diversion services that we provide, like household hazardous waste, our Purple Can Club, as well as our enforcement and our education and outreach programming. Just to remind the board, the problem that we've identified is that our reserve funding that we have used to mitigate the rates that everybody pays in Fairfax County for disposing of trash, we've been using that to, sorry, let me start that over again. I said that incorrectly. Our financial situation there, you can see the reserve fund balance in the left-hand bar graph, and you can see the tip fee charge in the right-hand graph. The tip fee is what everybody pays to dispose of trash, regardless of whether you're bringing it straight to us or you're paying a private hauler.
Our reserve funds that we have used to mitigate those increases in TIP fees, which you can see the inflection point in the graph, are becoming exhausted. So we will run a deficit in fiscal 28 of approximately $6 million based on our current estimate, and then that deficit grows into the future as the reserves are fully exhausted. As a reminder of our concerns about liability, Flow control, or the county's ability to regulatorily determine where trash is managed and disposed of in Fairfax County, is a critical component of our current system. As the TIP fee rises, we lose economic flow control as it becomes more economically beneficial for private haulers of the community to take trash somewhere outside of the county for disposal.
An additional concern here is that we're running a transfer station, right, so a landfill gas recovery system. We're talking about everything that goes with a pretty significant industrial facility in the middle of the county with no emergency reserve. So if there is an issue, and we have had issues at solid waste facilities in the past, we certainly remember the fire at Reworld, then Covanta, we would be looking to the general fund to provide whatever funds we would need to recover from the emergency.
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Agenda
8 items
1
What agenda item is the Environmental Committee focusing on in this meeting?
0:02–10:34
2
How are the FY 28 and FY 29 solid‑waste budget shortfalls affecting the Refuse Disposal Fund?
10:34–20:54
3
Why is the TIP (trash‑in‑pay) fee rising and how does it impact flow‑control and private haulers?
20:54–28:29
4
What do regional TIP‑fee comparisons reveal about Fairfax County’s cost structure?
28:29–35:53
5
Which revenue‑generation options (sustainability fee, base charge, general‑fund allocation) are being considered to close the deficit?
35:53–41:23
6
How could a sustainability fee or base charge change the per‑household cost for residents?
41:23–48:35
7
What long‑term strategies (new transfer station, zero‑waste centers, regional partnerships) are proposed to secure future funding?
48:35–55:12
8
What are the next steps and action items before the board adjourns the meeting?
55:12–1:02:02
Speakers
6 identified
Rachna Sizemore Heizer 9 min
Pat Herrity 5 min
Jeffrey C. McKay 4 min
Rodney L. Lusk 1 min
Kathy L. Smith 1 min
Andres F. Jimenez 1 min
Officials recognised by voice; public commenters shown as “Speaker N” unless they state their name.
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