The city of Philadelphia has built a new $33 million waste transfer center in Roxborough, with the Sanitation Department announcing its completion and holding an open house and ribbon cutting on Nov. 14.

The Northwest Transfer Station, located at 301 W. Domino Lane, will transfer up to 560 tons per day of trash and 100 tons per day of recycling materials, utilizing 24 trucks and 42 employees, said Keith Warren, deputy commissioner of sanitation.

Mayor Cherelle Parker, city and state officials attended the ceremony, marking the only time the station was open to the public for tours.

“This city deserves this state-of-the-art facility that allows for improved efficiency in waste management and recycling,” Parker said at the ceremony.

The new facility replaces the adjacent transfer station on Domino Lane, which officials said has become outdated and an unsustainable cost burden.

The modernized station is set to improve trash collection to accommodate the current volume and reduce vehicle emissions use, according to a Sanitation Department news release. The new center also differs in that it will transfer recycled materials, instead of only trash.

“Northwest Philly can be kind of remote. Recycling at this site means that over 50 trucks a week will save thousands of miles per year… instead of having to go all the way to Cottman Avenue up in Northeast Philadelphia. That will be saving a lot of wear and tear on the trucks and the emissions from those trucks,” Kyle Lewis, the city’s Recycling Program director, said at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Both the new and old facilities sit on a city–owned property above the Umbria Street and Domino Lane intersection.

The seven–acre site of the new facility was previously used as an ash disposal site for the Northwest Incinerator, which was converted into a transfer station in 1982. In the 1980s, a part of the site was capped with a parking lot and the rest remained overgrown with vegetation, according to a 2021 city report.

In the Streets Department’s 2021 project proposal, engineering supervisor Stephen Massa wrote that the underdeveloped property was an ideal location for the new station because it already was marked as a city industrial zone, and it would allow the city to continue using the existing facility during construction. The city also planned to create three rain gardens and plant additional trees around the perimeter.

Community residents and members of local civic organizations vehemently opposed the project on social media and at a public forum with city officials in February 2024, The Times Herald reported. One primary criticism from residents was that the city should have consulted the public before disrupting the site.

Some residents questioned the city’s decision to build a new facility rather than upgrade the existing one, while others expressed concerns about the center’s impact on traffic, parking and the environment, Theresa Kehler, president of the Upper Roxborough Civic Association, told the Local.

Some longtime residents have the impacts of the incinerator fresh in their minds and are hesitant about the thought of another waste management facility arriving in their backyards. The Northwest Incinerator had a history of exceeding pollution limits and emitting ash, smoke and foul odor.

In another meeting in March of 2024, city officials said they couldn’t build the new facility on the site of the existing one due to structural conditions of the old building, and because the project would cost double the amount. The site needed to be built closer to the street to accommodate trucks and to avoid disturbing the parking lot that is capping the old ash fill. Officials also promised to monitor dust, odor and other environmental hazards.

Following public feedback, the city decided to use the existing entrance on Domino Lane rather than install one on Umbria Street, which residents said already faces traffic congestion.

The city also plans to decommission the old facility and decontaminate the waste pits.

Many people’s fears were allayed after that meeting, but there are still mixed feelings about the center among residents, Kehler said. Nearby businesses rely on Umbria Street for parking. Others are still concerned about disruption of the new site on vegetation and whether decontaminating the old site is an effective enough solution.

Kehler said she understands the city needs to build a new facility to accommodate the current volume of trash and that it would affect residents’ pocketbooks more to have their waste trucked outside the area.

“No one likes it to be in their neighborhood, but I think this was the best path forward that they could have come up with,” Kehler told the Local. “Nobody wants to see their taxes go up tremendously, because the cost of exporting our rubbish out of the city is not really a great option either. I think what’s done is done.”

Kehler’s main issue with the project’s management was the lack of initial communication from the city. She, as well as the heads of the Residents of Shawmont Valley Association and the Ridge Park Civic Association, were the primary organizers of the public forum last year.

“I feel like we had to almost go backwards to fight a battle we wouldn’t have otherwise had. But I think at this point, if they stand by all their promises to mitigate rodents and smell and interference with the near and abutting neighbors… as long as they stand by their word, I think this is probably the best option that we had,” Kehler said. “But it is still understandably not what everybody would have liked in their neighborhood.”