Deschutes County commissioners gave the thumbs up for a $20 million plan to upgrade the 30-year-old Negus Transfer Station and Recycling Center on Northeast Maple Avenue in Redmond. The project has been in the works for several years, county Solid Waste Director Chad Centola said. He said they have been working with a design team for about a year and a half, and are close to sending the project out to solicit bids from contractors. Transfer stations are sites are where waste is brought and recyclables are sorted, then trucked to the landfill.
The new facility will have a weigh scale and will be fashioned to look and operate much like Knott Landfill, the county’s landfill in southeast Bend. Jesse Martinez was at the Negus transfer station on Friday afternoon. “It works, but it gets crowded,” he said. “Compared to Knott, where you pull in and everyone leaves in a separate way they came in, it makes it a lot less crowded. And people who can’t back up have a hard time here.”