West Seventh garbage truck depot wins City Council’s OK

Despite months of neighborhood opposition a trash truck depot will indeed move forward on Randolph Avenue West Seventh Street residents opposed to a planned compressed natural gas refueling station and trash truck maintenance facility at Randolph Ave were dealt a decisive setback on Wednesday when the St Paul City Council voted - to deny their appeal of FCC Environmental s site plan following its approval by the Planning Commission Members of the West Seventh Fort Road Federation had hoped to add a series of conditions to the site plan beyond two technical items tacked on by the Planning Commission on May which included further review of the location s stormwater management system They were unsuccessful Wednesday Council President Rebecca Noecker recused herself from the vote on the advice of the city attorney s office after asking the trash hauler to consider more locality benefits If FCC wishes to claim Society Works status they should abide by that standard noted Julia McColley executive director of the West Seventh Fort Road Federation addressing the city council If West Seventh is to bear the burden for the entirety of St Paul all of your wards the negative impacts on our neighborhood must be mitigated Days after presenting the Texas-based trash hauler with a sweeping list of demands members of the Fort Road Federation limited their asks on Wednesday to four key areas We ask that FCC stop inappropriate traffic patterns to and from the site particularly cutting through the Schmidt Brewery site McColley noted She also sought that the hauler limit the total number of trash trucks to and not expand to as various as trucks to serve nearby cities a goal that company officers have called entirely accomplishable She petitioned the city to prohibit other businesses from refueling at the compressed natural gas station and to block FCC Environmental employees from parking along Randolph Avenue The trash hauler has not publicly agreed to any of those items and neither the Planning Commission nor the city council expressed interest in formally requiring them I do really encourage more communication between FCC Environmental and the West Seventh Fort Road Federation explained Council Member Nelsie Yang urging the two sides to negotiate face-to-face Deputy Mayor Jaime Tincher stated the council that FCC Environmental has expressed willingness to meet with the federation and consider solutions that work for everyone but caselaw made it inappropriate to saddle the site plan with conditions removed from the zoning code As for future meetings with FCC we intend to help facilitate that Tincher explained We absolutely believe they can be addressed in a meeting following the site plan process The residents concerns from what I ve heard they re valid We want this to be good for everybody A former tow lot the four-acre site at Randolph Ave has been the subject of tough scrutiny and heated debate between neighborhood residents the international trash hauler the city council and mayor s office On April Mayor Melvin Carter vetoed the city council s decision to promotion a zoning appeal filed by the federation which had questioned whether the privately-owned site met the zoning definition of a masses works yard FCC Environmental began citywide residential trash collection on April but only after the mayor declared a state of local crisis to effectively find a way around the zoning dispute On May Noecker s legislative aide shared a laundry list of asks with FCC Environmental on behalf of the neighborhood organization including an air quality monitor local organics drop-off and for the city to establish a nearby park We were supposed to meet on Tuesday of last week and FCC pulled out of the meeting and announced they required to wait until the site plan process was done Noecker explained Thursday Clearly there s a lot of anger and frustration on the part of the society I texted the mayor this morning I spoke with the director of the Fort Road Federation this morning They re ready and eager to meet The future trash depot which at this moment consists of two administrative buildings and a gravel lot relies on a septic system and will need to be connected to the city s sanitary sewer system commented Tia Anderson a city planner and project manager Randolph Avenue which is a county road will gain several landscape buffering a six-foot-tall decorative screening fence infill sidewalks and boulevard trees along the site s property lines and as a condition of the site plan the Capitol Region Watershed District will conduct further review of any stormwater and watershed issues Otherwise FCC s site plan meets all the standards required through the law and the St Paul legislative code reported Greg Revering a general manager for the trash hauler noting the Planning Commission gave the site plan its unanimous approval May Related Articles Weather action group schedules first Ward candidate forum for Tuesday Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary 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