Work continues at the Carter County Landfill to recover from a fire that devastated the facility earlier this year.

On Wednesday, a work crew broke ground for the construction of a new garage to replace the one which burned during an early morning fire at the facility in early January. In addition to the garage, the fire also destroyed three of the landfill’s trucks — a front-loader, roll-off truck, and a pickup truck — along with several items of equipment and tools such as welders and air compressors.

Since the January fire, Carter County Solid Waste Director Benny Lyons has been working slowly to replace the items destroyed in the fire, and completion of the new garage is a significant step in the landfill’s recovery.

“We’ve replaced stuff as needed right now because we are still living out of a Conex box,” Lyons said.

Without a garage to store equipment, Lyons has been storing items in a metal storage container, but that means when landfill employees must work on vehicles or equipment they have to do so out in the open without any shelter from the heat or rain.

The new garage will be larger and constructed to serve the needs of the landfill better, Lyons said.

The old garage was 30 feet by 50 feet. The new one will be 50 feet by 80 feet.

“This one is going to have a garage door big enough so our compactor will fit inside of it,” Lyons said. “I’ll be able to put my tanker truck in there too.”

The landfill uses the tanker truck to haul off leachate from the closed portion of the landfill, something which the state requires Lyons to do. The tanker truck would not fit in the old garage, which caused some problems with the vehicle, according to Lyons. “The valves were freezing in the winter time,” he said.

The new garage will allow the tanker to be stored inside in a heated environment to avoid that problem.

“I think our new garage is going to be a lot nicer than what we had before,” Lyons said. “I’m absolutely tickled to death.”

Currently, the construction crew is working to grade the area to pour a concrete pad for the building installation. Once the pad is completed, Lyons said the building would be finished in approximately 12 weeks.

The new garage building was fabricated by NCI Building Systems, which is located in Elizabethton. Local construction firm Richardson Builders was contracted to construct the pad and install the building.