WHAT: Yamhill County Board of Commissioners Meeting
WHERE: McMInnville Civic Hall, 200 NE 2nd Street (corner of Baker in McMinnville)
WHEN: Thursday, March 12th, 10 AM (come early to get seating!)
WHY: Because having the largest garbage dump west of the Cascades is not in Yamhill County's best interest
Can't come to the meeting? Email your comments to Mike Brandt at the Planning Department: brandtm@co.yamhill.or.us.
Many of you did this last December -- the record is full of citizens' comments. THANK YOU! But it is important that you do it again. You will be joining the City of McMinnville, which wrote last year to express their concerns that dump expansion is not in the region's best interests. The City Council continues to stick their necks way out. Please join them one last time and voice your concerns.
Do you farm near the dump? Do garbage stink, litter and blowing garbage,
and hordes of birds impact your farm? Could your ability to sell your farm
be impacted by proximity to the dump? What about getting a farm loan?
Does decreased property value because of proximity to the dump affect
how much you can borrow? All of these are important arguments.
Other important issues include: •odors •emissions of all kinds •litter •the visual effect of having a mountain of garbage sitting 50 feet from
Highway 18 •out-of-county waste
In the last few months, the percent of out-of-county garbage coming to the dump has grown while Yamhill County waste has decreased. In the years to come this trend will probably continue. More and more garbage from every place else. This will be the only opportunity to impress upon the Commissioners that Yamhill County is not well-served being Metro's garbage pit.
Cultivating garbage instead of food is not a farming practice, but operating a winery is, along with growing grapes, grass, veggies, filberts; raising chickens, sheep, dogs, horses, goats, pheasants. How will an ever-expanding garbage "farm" impact the livelihoods of the real farmers in the neighborhood?
Waste Management and DEQ both admit that odor control has been ineffective. The smell continues. Should the County have to suffer from another 20 years of the stink?
Ground and surface water contamination is another real problem that the County and DEQ have ignored. In the past year alone, tens of thousands of gallons of leachate poured out of the dump into local waterways and storm water runoff has been contaminated by zinc and E.coli. Why should farmers, all the way to the Willamette River and beyond, have to irrigate their land with water that flows by such an obvious source of water contamination? Who will want to buy food that is irrigated with contaminated water?
Let the County know you are concerned about these issues. Include your personal observations and experiences. Tell our Commissioners what restrictions they should place on continued landfill operations.
And thank you for your efforts. We couldn't do this without all of you!
Sincerely, the Stop the Dump Coalition
Friday, February 27, 2015
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
Recology Recycles Styrofoam
One of the most ubiquitous yet most difficult to reuse substances has found a local recycling home. Recology is now accepting styrofoam at its recycling venue in McMinnville.
Recology has been planning to add styrofoam to its recycling repertoire for some time. Recently the company was able to refurbish a machine that compacts styrofoam down to about 1/50th of its ordinary size. The new substance is hardly foam but instead a material that can be cut and molded like a dense plastic.
Recology estimates that, at the rate consumers have been dropping off styrofoam at the center, it will take about three years to fill one truck with the compacted material!
It's time to stop chucking that stuff in the landfill. Get it out of the garage and take it to Recology now!
Recology Recovery Zone is located at 2200 NE Orchard Avenue next door to Greenlands.
Recology has been planning to add styrofoam to its recycling repertoire for some time. Recently the company was able to refurbish a machine that compacts styrofoam down to about 1/50th of its ordinary size. The new substance is hardly foam but instead a material that can be cut and molded like a dense plastic.
Recology estimates that, at the rate consumers have been dropping off styrofoam at the center, it will take about three years to fill one truck with the compacted material!
It's time to stop chucking that stuff in the landfill. Get it out of the garage and take it to Recology now!
Recology Recovery Zone is located at 2200 NE Orchard Avenue next door to Greenlands.
Saturday, February 7, 2015
The Dirty Handprint Writing on the Wall
As most readers no doubt know, Oregon state law protects farmland throughout the state, and especially "high value" farmland. The way we know which land is "high value" is by examining the topsoil.
The federal Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) acts as the nation's "Keeper of the Soil." Periodically the NRCS maps out the soil in a given area and releases these maps to the public and to decision-makers.
One of these maps led the Oregon Department of Agriculture to argue last year to our County Board of Commissioners that the existing dump could not be rezoned to EFU (Exclusive Farm Use) because the placement of waste on that land had changed the soils from usable farm soil to "miscellaneous area - essentially no soil and support(s) little or no vegetation."
The land next to the dump is high-value soil, however -- the best stuff for farming. Last year's rezoning was an effort to green light expansion of the landfill onto this valuable dirt. When this land too is buried in garbage, it will also be reclassed "miscellaneous" and a precious treasure will be forever lost.
But what protects the soils next to the area next to the dump? Waste Management hasn't (yet) proposed expanding the dump onto this dirt, but it does own the land, which is also largely "high value."
Turns out there is no law or rule in Yamhill County that would prevent Waste Management from "mining" that good topsoil and carting it away, or up onto the dump.
Leonard Rydell, an engineer who worked for the landfill in the early days before resigning over the shoddy quality of the work done out there, puts it this way:
"Landfills create a certain amount of dirt by excavation. However, there also are landfill operational needs:
1. They need clay to build the perimeter berms and topsoil on the surface for vegetation.
2. They need dirt for daily cover.
3. They need three feet of dirt for final cover.
4. They need dirt to build the road across the wetland [proposed in the expansion application].
5. They need a place to store dirt, as the [landfill's] footprint uses all of the available land.
6. The proposed SDR [Site Design Review] design approval doesn't leave extra room for storage or contain information as to the dirt needs and farm land impacts.
"[Yamhill County Planning Director] Mike Brandt has confirmed that Yamhill County does not have a process to keep people from moving dirt around, and no regulations at all regulating grading or protecting farm land from dirt mining. As far as the County is concerned, if you wanted to buy property, harvest the topsoil and leave, the County has no ordinances that stand in the way.
"Waste Management, if allowed to proceed, will continue taking dirt from where they see fit, and the cheapest place to get it is across the highway [Highway 18] or across the fill in the wetlands next to the RV Park. Riverbend has already strip mined about ten acres for the current landfill...."
Leonard finishes,"You can see the handwriting on the wall." Yeah. In dirty handprints.
The federal Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) acts as the nation's "Keeper of the Soil." Periodically the NRCS maps out the soil in a given area and releases these maps to the public and to decision-makers.
One of these maps led the Oregon Department of Agriculture to argue last year to our County Board of Commissioners that the existing dump could not be rezoned to EFU (Exclusive Farm Use) because the placement of waste on that land had changed the soils from usable farm soil to "miscellaneous area - essentially no soil and support(s) little or no vegetation."
The land next to the dump is high-value soil, however -- the best stuff for farming. Last year's rezoning was an effort to green light expansion of the landfill onto this valuable dirt. When this land too is buried in garbage, it will also be reclassed "miscellaneous" and a precious treasure will be forever lost.
But what protects the soils next to the area next to the dump? Waste Management hasn't (yet) proposed expanding the dump onto this dirt, but it does own the land, which is also largely "high value."
Turns out there is no law or rule in Yamhill County that would prevent Waste Management from "mining" that good topsoil and carting it away, or up onto the dump.
Leonard Rydell, an engineer who worked for the landfill in the early days before resigning over the shoddy quality of the work done out there, puts it this way:
"Landfills create a certain amount of dirt by excavation. However, there also are landfill operational needs:
1. They need clay to build the perimeter berms and topsoil on the surface for vegetation.
2. They need dirt for daily cover.
3. They need three feet of dirt for final cover.
4. They need dirt to build the road across the wetland [proposed in the expansion application].
5. They need a place to store dirt, as the [landfill's] footprint uses all of the available land.
6. The proposed SDR [Site Design Review] design approval doesn't leave extra room for storage or contain information as to the dirt needs and farm land impacts.
"[Yamhill County Planning Director] Mike Brandt has confirmed that Yamhill County does not have a process to keep people from moving dirt around, and no regulations at all regulating grading or protecting farm land from dirt mining. As far as the County is concerned, if you wanted to buy property, harvest the topsoil and leave, the County has no ordinances that stand in the way.
"Waste Management, if allowed to proceed, will continue taking dirt from where they see fit, and the cheapest place to get it is across the highway [Highway 18] or across the fill in the wetlands next to the RV Park. Riverbend has already strip mined about ten acres for the current landfill...."
Leonard finishes,"You can see the handwriting on the wall." Yeah. In dirty handprints.
Monday, February 2, 2015
Stop the Dump Files Appeal
The Stop the Dump Coalition has appealed the Planning Commission's decision to approve expansion of Riverbend Landfill. The appeal was filed by STDC President Ilsa Perse on January 30.
The Yamhill County Planning Commission (PC) narrowly approved the proposed expansion subject to a number of conditions. The most stringent condition prohibited use of an area north of the existing dump for landfill purposes. That area, dubbed Module 10, would bring the landfill within 2 miles of McMinnville, the County's largest city and a vocal opponent of expansion.
The appeal cites 23 "deficiencies and violations" in the PC decision. These range from violations of the Endangered Species Act (because landfill owner Riverbend Landfill Co. (RLC) has yet to prove the expansion will not negatively impact the South Yamhill River's critical habitat for spring chinook salmon and winter steelhead trout) to violations of the County's Site Design Review ordinance (for a host of reasons, including failure to adequately address the loss of high-value farmland or to accurately describe existing farm uses in the area or how those will be impacted) to use of the wrong approval procedure (given that the existing landfill is a nonconforming use, as conceded by RLC in its application to expand).
The County Board of Commissioners (BOC) will hear the appeal. Planning Director Mike Brandt has suggested the appeal may not be heard until March. According to Brandt, neither appellants nor RLC will be limited to the matters cited in the appeal document when presenting evidence and arguments during the hearing. This means community members who want to argue other grounds for denying -- or approving -- the expansion will be able to do so without filing their own appeal.
Unfortunately for those in the community who want the landfill to close when it reaches capacity, the BOC is considered a more dump-friendly board than the PC is. With the filing of an appeal, Waste Management, which owns RLC, can ask the BOC to reject the conditions imposed by the PC and approve the expansion with Module 10 intact.
The Yamhill County Planning Commission (PC) narrowly approved the proposed expansion subject to a number of conditions. The most stringent condition prohibited use of an area north of the existing dump for landfill purposes. That area, dubbed Module 10, would bring the landfill within 2 miles of McMinnville, the County's largest city and a vocal opponent of expansion.
The appeal cites 23 "deficiencies and violations" in the PC decision. These range from violations of the Endangered Species Act (because landfill owner Riverbend Landfill Co. (RLC) has yet to prove the expansion will not negatively impact the South Yamhill River's critical habitat for spring chinook salmon and winter steelhead trout) to violations of the County's Site Design Review ordinance (for a host of reasons, including failure to adequately address the loss of high-value farmland or to accurately describe existing farm uses in the area or how those will be impacted) to use of the wrong approval procedure (given that the existing landfill is a nonconforming use, as conceded by RLC in its application to expand).
The County Board of Commissioners (BOC) will hear the appeal. Planning Director Mike Brandt has suggested the appeal may not be heard until March. According to Brandt, neither appellants nor RLC will be limited to the matters cited in the appeal document when presenting evidence and arguments during the hearing. This means community members who want to argue other grounds for denying -- or approving -- the expansion will be able to do so without filing their own appeal.
Unfortunately for those in the community who want the landfill to close when it reaches capacity, the BOC is considered a more dump-friendly board than the PC is. With the filing of an appeal, Waste Management, which owns RLC, can ask the BOC to reject the conditions imposed by the PC and approve the expansion with Module 10 intact.
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