The Pamlico Beach Solid Waste Convenience Site is shutting down at the end of the year, but there’s a back-up plan in place.

The county has hired the engineering firm of CDM-Smith to both manage the closure of the Pamlico Beach site, and expand the nearby Ransomville convenience site.

The Ransomville site is located 8 miles away from the Pamlico Beach site, at 6288 N.C. Highway 99 South. The county plans to make the Ransomville site larger and include a mounded site to assist residents with disposal of trash, according to Brian Alligood, Beaufort County manager.

“It will be a drive-up situation. This will be built in a modern fashion,” Alligood said.

Alligood said work will be going on at both sites simultaneously.

“There will be no interruption of service,” he said. “There’s going to be some disruption. There might be some inconvenience while they’re doing the work at Ransomville, but the site will stay open.”

The county initially signed a lease on the Pamlico Beach site in the 1980s with the chemical company that owned the site then. The Mills Family Trust now has ownership, and the owners want to sell the entire tract of 45-50 acres, according to Alligood. The person marketing the land reached out to ask if the county would be interested in buying the portion of the land where the convenience site is located.

“We made an offer, and they said that’s nowhere close to being enough,” Alligood said. “The (Beaufort County Board of Commissioners) said they’re not going to pay that much for that little piece of property.”

The asking price was $20,000. The property is approximately 1 to 1 1/2 acres and occupies a “small corner” of the total tract.

Initially, the county was asked by the owners to vacate the site by the end of November, however, environmental regulations require the property to be returned to the manner in which the county received it. The eviction was extended so the county could hire CDM-Smith to remove dumpsters, fences, shave down the mounded land and more.

“It was quick turnaround. It was short notice,” Alligood said.

The Board of Commissioners had already allotted money in this year’s budget to commission a study of the county’s waste facilities — whether updates and changes or even closures should occur — but the study won’t take place until the beginning of the next year.

“We are going to be looking at all the sites anyway — this was just one that happened really quickly on us,” Alligood said.