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Sustainable business park will be located on 250 acres of land adjacent to the South Kent Landfill.
Kent County has taken another step toward reducing solid waste by 90 percent by 2020.
The Kent County Board of Public Works unanimously approved the master plan to build a sustainable business park, estimated at $500 million, on 250 acres of land adjacent to the South Kent Landfill, 10300 S. Kent Drive SW in Byron Center.
While the Department of Public Works has three years to plan the overall project, there are three projects the board approved that can be implemented immediately, according to Darwin Baas, DPW director.
The DPW will begin planning in the next several weeks to integrate comprehensive systems in the park for construction and demolition waste recycling, composting and ash mining.
According to an earlier Business Journal report, these three pieces are part of the DPW's solution to the growing amount of waste buried in the South Kent Landfill.
The county would own the park and lease land to private companies, with 100 acres committed to removing the many high-value items from, the trash. The remaining land ideally would be for companies that could convert recovered materials into new products, such as a combined heat and power plant.
The project's waste sorting and processing alone is expected to create 150 jobs and an...