A trash-for-trails trade between Manor Township and Lancaster County's solid waste agency could be a boon to future generations of bike riders along the Susquehanna River.

In a deal being worked out by the township, home of the county's Frey Farm landfill, and the Solid Waste Management Authority, Manor Township would agree to take more waste over the next year in exchange for an estimated $300,000 extra in tipping fees.

The township has said it will use the money to develop a rail-trail on its portion of the unused Enola Low-Grade rail line, a picturesque tree-lined swath between Route 441 and the Susquehanna River .

Supervisors chairman John May recently stood where the trail could be built and said with a laugh that he hopes to use the trail "before I'm too old and frail to ride it."

He plans to leave office when his term expires in 2013.

The new agreement could be approved by the Solid Waste Management Authority at its Aug. 15 meeting, according to authority executive director Jim Warner.

In the deal, the authority would give the township about 10 percent of the net "tipping fees" it gets to remove waste from the Norfolk Southern rail yard relocation project in Lancaster. That would work out to about $300,000 over the course of the waste removal operation.

Manor Township is host to the county's landfill, which is operated by the solid waste management authority. The authority pays some $1 million a year in "host fees" to the township.

For its part of the arrangement, Manor Township officials are agreeing to:

• Temporarily allow the solid-waste board to increase its daily limit at the landfill from 2,000 to 3,000 tons, a 50 percent increase.

• Temporarily allow the landfill to stay open an hour longer each afternoon, to 5 p.m.

• Allow the landfill to remain open three hours longer on Saturdays, to 3 p.m., until the project's done.

The work is expected to start this October or November and end in the spring, most likely April, Warner said.

Without Manor's approval, the project would have been extended over a year, he added.

 "By them allowing more trucks to come in, in a concentrated form, with more tons, the project gets done quicker," Warner explained.

The extra 1,000 tons means about five extra truck trips each hour into Manor Township, Warner estimated.

While the rail-yard relocation is mainly an effort of Lancaster General Hospital and Franklin & Marshall College, "We're going to reap some financial benefits, and this project gives us the ability to share some of that," Warner said.

"And we want to help Manor achieve their recreational opportunities with this rail trail."

The county solid wastes authority's predecessor agency, the Lancaster Area Refuse Authority, had accepted the waste from several places, including household waste, building rubbish and linoleum, back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Warner said. It was trucked to the Norfolk Southern site west of Lancaster just off Harrisburg Pike.

Now Norfolk Southern wants the land cleaned up. LGH and F&M will employ a contractor to do the work, and the 50-year-old waste will be trucked to the lined Frey Farm landfill, near Creswell, before a development project begins at the Lancaster site.

Manor Township had first approached the solid-waste panel in March, proposing the idea.

Warner said the solid-waste panel's support for a local community's recreation is not a first.

"In Conoy (Township), we bought 2.5 miles of rail trail, an old canal bed" as a step toward its development as a rail-to-trail project, Warner said.

Next year the waste management authority also plans to use proceeds from the Norfolk Southern project to pay the entire cost of a 2-mile trail on 70 acres it owns along Farmingdale Road in East Hempfield Township.

Of the Manor Township project being forged this summer, Warner said, "We're going to be here a long time, so cooperating with the township on initiatives of theirs, especially so close to our (landfill) operation, is important to building a cooperative, longtime relationship."


Staff writer David O'Connor can be reached at doconnor@LNPnews.com or 481-6033.