Charleston County is digging into its own trash pile — literally — to keep Bees Ferry Landfill open for another 20 years. Crews are removing decades-old incinerator ash from one existing cell and building a brand-new lined cell in its place, part of an $18 million project that officials say will add two decades of capacity without expanding the landfill's physical footprint.
The project repurposes two of the landfill's existing cells, Cell 3 and Cell 6, according to live5news.com. Cell 3 served as an ash dumping ground for the downtown incinerator decades ago, while Cell 6 has sat unused. Charleston County's Environmental Management Director Tom Cue has worked in the industry for about 30 years and took over the department in February 2023. Both repurposed cells will accept only municipal waste hauled from residents' homes, per the same station's report.
Decades of Ash Turned Into Building Material
Inside Cell 3, the old incinerator ash has hardened over the years into a substance resembling lime, which has been approved for reclamation and reuse in road projects. Charleston County is removing that ash and constructing a new lined landfill cell in its place, with the old Cell 3 pile having reached 40 feet high and still holding more than 100 feet of unused airspace above it. The county is separately reclaiming some of that ash for road projects, the station notes.
Procurement records tied to the project describe construction of roughly 22 acres of Class Three landfill cells across Cells 3 and 6, according to govtribe.com. Those documents also call for abandoning the existing ash monofill within the Cell 3 footprint and installing approximately 300,000 cubic yards of structural fill soil. Cell 6 is already under construction, and both cells are expected to be completed by the end of 2027.
Conflicting Numbers on How Much Room Is Left
Exactly how much space Bees Ferry has left depends on who you ask and when the estimate was made. Live5News reported the landfill currently has five to seven years of capacity remaining, while the Post and Courier put the figure at about five more years of garbage. That same Post and Courier report noted the landfill takes in roughly 200,000 tons of waste a year with room for about one million more tons, a somewhat rosier picture than Cue's nine-year estimate. Older projections paint an even wider range: Charleston County's 2022 comprehensive plan estimated about 18 years of remaining capacity at the disposal rate of the time, citing the Charleston County Comprehensive Plan.
The landfill is currently divided into five cells and reaches about 90 feet around the site, well below its 170-foot maximum permitted height. Per the Post and Courier's earlier reporting, a permitted vertical expansion alone could add eight to 15 years and push the facility toward 30 years before hitting its ceiling. A separate estimate from Cue, cited by counton2.com, suggested expanding the current site could buy roughly another 10 years and push the need to relocate to a new site out to 28 or 30 years from now.
Keeping the Trash Flowing — and Out of the Wrong Pile
Day to day, Charleston County employees route recyclables to the Material Recovery Facility and nonrecyclables to Bees Ferry Landfill, with crews at the landfill recovering any recyclables that mistakenly end up there before shipping them back for processing. Cue oversees hundreds of county employees. He pointed to a streak of more than 40 consecutive passing inspections from March 2023 through this month, following past instances when the facility previously failed some South Carolina Department of Environmental Services inspections.
The landfill takes in about 200,000 tons of trash per year. Leachate is liquid that drains through buried waste. The new cells will include liners and leachate systems.
Looking Beyond Bees Ferry for the Long Term
County officials have said they are examining other waste-management technologies that might stretch the landfill's life further without incineration, according to the Post and Courier.
Charleston County already outperforms national averages on the recycling side: its Material Recovery Facility has reported an average recycling rate of 78.7 percent for material sent its way, according to the Charleston City Paper, compared with a national rate of just 25 to 35 percent for material tossed into recycling bins. For now, the Cell 3 and Cell 6 work represents the county's most immediate fix for a landfill that, by nearly every estimate, is running out of room faster than anyone would like.
