City Councilman Richard Conlin is revisiting the possibility of using a Harbor Island site for the city's future garbage-handling facility.

The city plans to build an "intermodal solid-waste transfer facility." Garbage trucks from throughout the city would take their loads to the facility, where the garbage would be packed into shipping containers and loaded onto rail cars for shipment to Eastern Oregon.

Seattle Public Utilities studied four possible sites for the intermodal garbage transfer facility, including the former Fisher flour mill at Terminal 10 on the southwest corner of Harbor island. However Seattle Public Utilities concluded the best site was near South Corgiat Drive, between Interstate 5 and Boeing Field.

"It has the lowest cost and the least impacts," said project manager Henry Friedman of the Corgiat Drive site. For now, Seattle Public Utilities is sticking with its recommendation, he said. But city officials are being lobbied by the Georgetown Community Council to drop the Corgiat Drive site from consideration.

The Georgetown Council sent letters to the entire City Council, Mayor Greg Nickels and Seattle Public Utilities. They complained about potential traffic congestion, trucks damaging historic Georgetown buildings through vibration, noise, odors, displacement of businesses and the possibility of future expansion.

Conlin recently took over as chairman of the council's Environment, Emergency Management and Utilities Committee and has been asking questions of Seattle Public Utilities about the basic assumptions of the proposal to build an intermodal garbage transfer facility.

"I looked at the facility plan and I'm not sure it's where we want to go," the councilman said. "It's a pretty huge commitment."

Conlin pointed out that the planned facility, along with rebuilding the north and south transfer stations, would double Seattle's garbage handling capacity. However the city has no plan to reduce the amount of garbage Seattle residents produce, he said.

The Harbor Island locations considered for the facility at Terminal 10 would pose no significant adverse environmental impacts, Friedman said. But there are other problems.

The Port of Seattle owns Terminal 10. The Port set a policy requiring facilities located on the waterfront be engaged in a water-related activity, Friedman said. If a waterfront facility does not have a water-related activity, there's a 200-foot "setback' requirement. That means facilities built on Harbor Island that don't use the surrounding water in the facility's operations must be at least 200 feet away from the water's edge, Friedman said.

The intermodal garbage transfer facility would be loading containers onto railroad cars, not barges, so the facility wouldn't qualify as water-related. Therefore no buildings could be built closer than 200 feet from shore, and that would reduce the overall size of the facility to the point where it could not be built at Terminal 10, Friedman said.

Conlin is still submitting questions to Seattle Public Utilities about its future garbage-handling plans but he plans to hold public meetings about the issue near the end of June.

Tim St. Clair can be reached at tstclair@robinsonnews.com or 932-0300.