The Southeastern Public Service Authority (SPSA) is the solid waste management agency for the one-million-population region south of

Hampton Roads Hampton Roads is a body of water in the United States that serves as a wide channel for the James River, James, Nansemond River, Nansemond, and Elizabeth River (Virginia), Elizabeth rivers between Old Point Comfort and Sewell's Point near whe ...

Harbor and the lower

James River The James River is a river in Virginia that begins in the Appalachian Mountains and flows from the confluence of the Cowpasture and Jackson Rivers in Botetourt County U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowli ...

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...

. Based in

Chesapeake, Virginia Chesapeake is an independent city in Virginia, United States. At the 2020 census, the population was 249,422, making it the second-most populous city in Virginia, the tenth largest in the Mid-Atlantic, and the 92nd-most populous city in the ...

, it services the independent cities of

Chesapeake Chesapeake most often refers to: *Chesapeake people, a Native American tribe also known as the Chesepian *Chesapeake Bay *Delmarva Peninsula, also known as the Chesapeake Peninsula Chesapeake may also refer to: Populated places In Virginia * ...

Franklin Franklin may refer to: People and characters * Franklin (given name), including list of people and characters with the name * Franklin (surname), including list of people and characters with the name * Franklin (class), a member of a historic ...

Norfolk Norfolk ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in England, located in East Anglia and officially part of the East of England region. It borders Lincolnshire and The Wash to the north-west, the North Sea to the north and eas ...

Portsmouth Portsmouth ( ) is a port city status in the United Kingdom, city and unitary authority in Hampshire, England. Most of Portsmouth is located on Portsea Island, off the south coast of England in the Solent, making Portsmouth the only city in En ...

Suffolk Suffolk ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East of England and East Anglia. It is bordered by Norfolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Essex to the south, and Cambridgeshire to the west. Ipswich is the largest settlement and the county ...

, and

Virginia Beach Virginia Beach (colloquially VB) is the List of cities in Virginia, most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), U.S. commonwealth of Virginia. The city is located on the Atlantic Ocean at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay in southeaster ...

and the counties of

Isle of Wight The Isle of Wight (Help:IPA/English, /waɪt/ Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''WYTE'') is an island off the south coast of England which, together with its surrounding uninhabited islets and Skerry, skerries, is also a ceremonial county. T ...

and

Southampton Southampton is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and unitary authority in Hampshire, England. It is located approximately southwest of London, west of Portsmouth, and southeast of Salisbury. Southampton had a population of 253, ...

. SPSA was created by an act of the

Virginia General Assembly The Virginia General Assembly is the legislative body of the Commonwealth of Virginia, the oldest continuous law-making body in the Western Hemisphere, and the first elected legislative assembly in the New World. It was established on July 30, ...

in 1976. Before, each community in South Hampton Roads fully managed its own solid waste. As federal environmental regulations became stricter in the 1970s, it became apparent that the region needed a regional system to manage the area's garbage. SPSA converts trash to steam and electricity, which it sells to the U.S. Navy's

Norfolk Naval Shipyard The Norfolk Naval Shipyard, often called the Norfolk Navy Yard and abbreviated as NNSY, is a U.S. Navy facility in Portsmouth, Virginia, for building, remodeling and repairing the Navy's ships. It is the oldest and largest industrial facility ...

and

Dominion Virginia Power Dominion Energy, Inc., commonly referred to as Dominion, is an American energy company headquartered in Richmond, Virginia that supplies electricity in parts of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina and supplies natural gas to parts of Ut ...

. SPSA facilities are located throughout its {{convert, 2000, sqmi, km2, adj=on service area. These facilities include the regional landfill, the

waste-to-energy Waste-to-energy (WtE) or energy-from-waste (EfW) refers to a series of processes designed to convert waste materials into usable forms of energy, typically electricity or heat. As a form of energy recovery, WtE plays a crucial role in both wa ...

system, nine transfer stations, nine household hazardous waste collection stations, and a yard-waste facility that produces mulch and compost, which are sold under the brand nam
Nature’s Blend
Residents in the SPSA region each throw away about six pounds of trash per day, resulting in about 2,200 pounds of trash a year per person, i.e. over a million tons of waste each year. Nearly half of this volume of garbage is converted into steam and electrical energy at the

system, about 40 percent is taken to the landfill and 10 percent is recycled. SPSA is

ISO 14001 The ISO 14000 family is a set of international standards for Natural environment, environment management systems. It was developed in March 1996 by International Organization for Standardization. The goal of these standards is to help organizations ...

certified. SPSA has approximately 150 employees.

External links

* http://www.spsa.com/ Waste collection