Neighbors Cry Foul Over Proposed Landscape Waste Transfer Station

Standing in his driveway, Ron Solomon points across the street to the area just over his neighbor’s back fence, where is seeking village board approval to build a landscape waste transfer station. 

“People are pretty upset,” says Solomon, who’s lived in his home on Laburnum Court for the past 11 years. “When they’re unloading these machines with these back-up buzzers, it’s going to affect people’s life.” 

Solomon and his neighbors in the Burr Oaks Circle subdivision, just west of Red’s, are concerned that the proposed transfer station will create not just noise but heavier truck traffic in the area, possible odors or pests from the landscape waste and maybe even health and environmental hazards.

At a village board meeting Tuesday night, Burr Oaks residents raised their concerns to trustees, who had been considering approval of the transfer station as an accessory use to the gardening center. But based on the issues residents brought up, trustees moved to send the proposal to the plan commission to go through a more extensive review process before deciding whether or not to approve it.  

As proposed by Red’s Garden Center, the landscape waste transfer facility would be located in the northeast corner of the garden center property, and would be accessed from Huehl Road. It would accept grass clippings, brush, leaves, and small branches from landscapers between 6:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday. According to EPA regulations, the waste could not be held at the station longer than 24 hours, and Red’s has proposed to remove it all by 5 p.m. each day. 

Carl Kupfer of IG Consulting, a firm hired by Red’s, estimates that the transfer station would bring an additional 25 landscaping trucks and one to three semi-trailers to Red’s Garden Center each day. If each of those 25 landscapers bought $100 worth of materials from Red’s Garden Center, manager Jeff Sibley estimates that the garden center could bring in $600,000 to $900,000 more per year. 

But Solomon and his neighbors fear the sound of those trucks pulling in and out will be a nuisance, particularly in the summer when they have their doors and windows open. 

“I would like to propose that an 18-wheeler truck be operated in your backyard 10 hours a day, six days a week, for a trial period of one year,” Burr Oaks Circle Homeowner’s Association President Anita Buyer told trustees. 

“Trucks must back up to dump and load,” she said. “This will be heard all day.” 

Sibley admitted that Red’s had already had some complaints from neighbors about back-up beepers, and told the village board that he could ask drivers to turn their beepers off. But Kupfer later told Patch that some companies require their drivers to have back-up beepers enabled at all times due to liability issues. Not all trucks have back-up beepers, however, he added.

“It was never our intention to mislead anybody,” said Terri Jones, owner of Red’s Garden Center.

Another resident of Burr Oaks Circle, Jerry Faigen, told the village board he was worried about the potential health issues of a landscape waste transfer station. He cited studies that showed landscape waste could release chemicals and toxins that affect people with suppressed immune systems, asthma, or heart conditions — and noted that the neighborhood is mostly composed of older, retired people who are more at risk for those conditions.

“I think landscape transfer should be in a larger and broader industrial area,” he said.

Addressing those concerns, Sibley and Kupfer say the transfer station will be contained in a small area far from the backyards of Burr Oaks Circle, and maintain that they will comply with all village and EPA regulations regarding landscape waste. 

While trustees A.C. Buehler and Robert Israel initially said that they didn’t think the proposed transfer station was a major issue, the village board ultimately voted to send the proposal to the plan commission for full review.

“We certainly have gotten a lot of input on this,” said trustee James Karagianis. “I believe this is something that is more appropriate to go through the full planning process.”

Solomon and his neighbors, meanwhile, are collecting signatures on a petition to keep the waste transfer station out of their backyard.

“To me, it makes no sense,” he said.