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The City of LaGrange is considering a rezoning change to allow for a company to operate a construction debris remediation site near the airport.

If approved, the reclamation site would be located on 28.5 acres in the 1900 block of Lukken Industrial Drive. The property is currently zoned Corridor Mixed Use (CR-MX) and would need to be changed to Campus Heavy Industrial (CP-HI) to accommodate the use. The Board of Planning and Zoning Appeals (BZA) recommended the change.

City Planner Mark Kostial said during the council’s work session that several companies have asked about the site, but most recently, a company would like to use the property as a remediation/waste management services site, which is not permitted in (CR-MX).

According to the applicant, the company wants to recycle construction debris, which would prevent it from going to the landfill and potentially prevent people from illegally dumping materials due to the cost of taking loads to landfills. The recycled materials would also provide alternative and affordable materials to use on job sites that may reduce construction budgets.

The applicant, Tim Gustafson, wants to recycle construction debris, specifically concrete, brick and asphalt, to be sold and reused as an aggregate material. The company would crush material, as opposed to taking it to a landfill, and then sell the recycled materials as aggregate fill.

“This type of material would never make its way to the city landfill, but it would go to the Troup County landfill, which I’m sure that the county would like to prevent from occurring,” Kostial said.

The BZA recommended the rezoning on the condition that no debris of any kind be buried on the parcels and no landfill activities can occur on these parcels at any point in the future, along with other buffering and hours of operation conditions.

The properties in question are also located within the city’s airport overlay district, so they would need to get the use cleared with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as well.

Councilman Mark Mitchell questioned where the debris would be coming from.

“We could have trucks coming all the way through town to sell their construction debris instead of taking it to the dump,” Mitchell said.

Gustafson said they expect most of the material would come from local contractors, but not all.

“A lot of it would be locally sourced. Whitesville soccer field is going to have a bunch of debris that needs to go. We can take it, crush it, repurpose it for driveways,” Gustafson said.

“The idea wouldn’t be to take dirty, poor material. The crusher would be screened. So the idea is to take in good material, screen out the bad and repurpose it. Not to take in junk and then try to repurpose it,” he said.

Mitchell was more concerned with what is coming in than what would occur at the site.

“The biggest concern I have is the distance you travel with that stuff. I’ve got some property where I continuously pick up construction debris that comes out of the top of those tractor trailers that have open tops, where there’s shingles and tiles and wood. We’ve got enough litter on our roads already,” Mitchell said.

Gustafson eased Mitchell’s concerns, saying they are not taking in that type of debris.

“We do not want to run a landfill. We do not want to bury. We do not want trash. This is strictly concrete, asphalt, things that can be repurposed. We don’t want to mix asbestos and wood and other materials,” Gustafson said.

The council later voted to call for a public hearing for the request on Tuesday, May 13.