Kitsap County Public Works is proposing developing the new $15 million Road Maintenance and Household Hazardous Waste facility at the intersection of Bond and Gunderson roads.

The new facility would sit on an isolated 16-acre parcel and include an administrative building, equipment storage and bulk material storage for county road maintenance.

Additionally, the facility would be home to a household hazardous waste facility for the public. There is no such facility in the north end of the county now.

“I’m sure many of you have been to our household hazardous waste facility down in Bremerton. We’ve been successfully operating that program for over twenty years … The one limitation to the program is that it’s about as far south in our county as it can be,” Solid Waste Division manager Chris Piercy said.

He said the county has held a few collection events on the north end, but over the years as the population of North Kitsap has grown it has become clear that there is a need for its own hazardous waste facility.

The current road maintenance facility at the intersection of Bond and Highway 305 sits on just under 3 acres, and its facilities, some well over 90 years old, can no longer serve the needs for road maintenance and does not have the space for development of a household hazardous waste facility, officials said.

“It’s operationally inefficient more or less because of its lack of size,” county road superintendent Jacques Dean said. “Some of these buildings were built in 1929, so this facility has been around for a long time, and the buildings were sited where they were needed at the time, and with the vehicles that we have now the site’s just not efficient.”

Another issue with the current facility is road access. Due to population growth on the north end, traffic on Highway 305 has increased, and it has become difficult for trucks and other work vehicles to exit and enter the facility.

The planning process for the new site began in 2016. The criteria required that the parcel is in a central location in the north end, have a minimum of 10 acres and be zoned for the proposed usage.

Initially, Public Works found seven properties, but for a variety of reasons those did not work out, and it became clear that the only possible space was the location that was selected. “It was the only site that met all of those prerequisite needs,” Dean said.

Once the site was identified a feasibility study was conducted in 2018, and in 2020 the property was purchased for $1.5 million. In February, OTAK, an engineering company out of Redmond, was hired to do project design and engineering.

Construction could start as early as December. As the project moves along there will be Open House events at the end of each design phase. The county plans to sell the old site once the new project is completed.