County to expand Barber Mill Road convenience site

As the sign says, a bigger and better solid waste convenience site is coming soon to Barber Mill Road.

 

Relief is on the way for users of the County’s solid waste convenience center on Barber Mill Road.

Johnston’s Solid Waste Department is designing an expansion of the site, which it hopes to complete by next summer.

“This particular site probably has one of the smallest footprints of any of our sites,” said Brian Beasley, director of Solid Waste. “The problem with that is it’s also our busiest site.”

For the County’s 12 convenience centers, the Saturday after Thanksgiving is their busiest day of the year. That’s especially true at Barber Mill.

“That site could see 1,000 customers that day,” Beasley said. “It has in the past.”

But the site’s small footprint limits the number of compactors and containers that Solid Waste Department can place there. “The way it’s designed now, we have one compactor, and then we have various other open-top containers for recycling,” Beasley explained.

And getting into and out of the site can be cumbersome because the entrance doubles as the exit. “So when the customers come in, they have to come in and go around the compactor, then they have to come back around,” Beasley said. “It’s kind of like a bottleneck.”

Still, traffic mostly flows, he said. “There are no issues when things are going smoothly,” Beasley said. “Our main problem with the site is when we change out the compactor.”

“When we change out the compactor, we have to stop traffic,” he said. “We can only accommodate so many cars in there while we change it out.”

It doesn’t take long: “It only takes 15, 20 minutes on average,” Beasley. said.

But on busy days, traffic can back up, even spilling onto Barber Mill Road. “Saturday is extremely busy,” Beasley said. “We could see as many as 600 customers on a typical Saturday. If the yard fills up, then we get some traffic backed up on the road, which we don’t want.”

To end those backups, County Commissioners have purchased eight adjoining acres. “We’re going to double the size of the site, and we’re going to add compactors,” Beasley said.

Currently, the site has a lone 3-yard compactor. “What we’re going to switch to is a 5-yard, which we’ve put in at a couple of other sites,” Beasley said. “They can process trash faster, and the hopper can hold more.

“With a 3-yard, once the hopper fills up, you’re having to wait for it to pack. A 5-yard holds more, and it’s more efficient. We can put more stuff in it before we have to change receivers.”

With more room at the site, Solid Waste will add a compactor for recycling and a second 5-yard compactor for trash. “And this is the really important part,” Beasley said. “We’re adding an exit. So now we’ll have an entrance and a separate exit.”

The recycling compactor will sit between the two trash compactors, with enough space between them for two lanes of traffic. “So you can throw trash in one side, recyclables in the other,” Beasley said.

The trash compactors will continue to fill up — and fill up more quickly than the recycling compactor — but here’s where having two will help. “When one fills up, we change that one out,” Beasley said. “But the traffic shouldn’t have to stop. You’ll be able to use the other one while we switch out the full container.

“There’ll be no downtime, and no downtime means no traffic backup.”

Solid Waste is designing the expansion now and hopes to have the project completed by June 30 of next year.

Page last updated on:  December 15, 2025