LAURINBURG — The city of Laurinburg could be getting rid of yard waste in a new way soon.

During Tuesday night’s Laurinburg City Council meeting, General Services Director Harold Haywood spoke to the council about an air curtain burner and why the conditional use permit for the burner was being requested.

The air curtain burner would be located at 600 Hall St., which is a city-owned property behind Public Works.

“The city manages a lot of yard waste,” Haywood said. “We are a tree city and we get a lot of yard waste from residents that we pick up, we get a lot of yard waste from storms and different things. Over the past 33-years that I’ve been with the city managing yard waste has been one of the biggest challenges out of all the solid waste services we provide. So we’re constantly trying to find better ways, less costly ways to do this.”

In the past, the city took the yard waste to Scotland County and let the county deal with managing it but in 2016 the city began bringing the yard waste to two locations where it was mulched and ground down. The change did reduce some costs but due to changes in state regulations, it could increase costs if it continued this way.

“If this gets approved, our next step is to submit an application to the state for a permit to actually use an air curtain burner to burn yard waste,” Haywood said. “One of their requirements before we can even submit the application for the permit is to get all the local requirements.”

Regulations with the air curtain burner include not burning more than 35 tons per day. Haywood added due to the amount of yard waste collected which averages about 11 tons per day, the city would only have to burn once or twice a week.

Other regulations would include no burning when the winds are more than 20 miles per hour, no burning if there is a burn ban by the North Carolina Forestry Service and only natural wood waste and yard waste can be burned. There would also be a firehose on the property just in case of emergencies during the operation of the burner.

“The center will smoke during startup, I know that’s been a concern,” Haywood said. “It will smoke a little during the start-up and again during the shutdown and when the air curtain is not active. When it’s not active is basically when it’s being loaded.”

It was asked how often the burner would need to be emptied and Haywood explained that there is a certain level on the machine to let the workers know when it needs to be removed.

“There’s actually a couple of things we can do with the ash,” Haywood said. “We can use some of the ash in our leaf windrows because that will help with the composting process … we can also give it away to farmers if they would like to have it.”

Haywood added it would not be a public site and would only be for use by the city.

Cost for air curtain burner was budgeted for 2021-22, and Council approved the conditional use permit unanimously.

Reach Katelin Gandee at [email protected]