It's taken more than a decade, but the once-McMinnville, now-Yamhill Valley News-Register has finally flipped. Once endorsing Riverbend expansion as key to the future of the County's economy (in 2007), the paper is now calling for Waste Management to close the dump.
Years of effort by a dedicated cadre of neighbors, local businesses, scientists, and garbage mavens seems to have finally paid off. Public opinion turned long ago against the dump, with the City of McMinnville and many area businesses realizing that a massive garbage pile on a tourist highway leading into town was not the best way to welcome visitors.
Metro, Riverbend's biggest customer, stopped sending waste here months ago after noting that hundreds of years of capacity exist in other Oregon landfills. No expansion needed.
And the state Court of Appeals ruled earlier this month against Riverbend's attempt to void a decision by the Land Use Board of Appeals that the landfill's arguments in favor of expansion were not worth the litter they were written on.
None of this effort has kept Waste Management from pursuing expansion, of course. Even as its proposal to add more square feet to its footprint has lost one court challenge after another, Riverbend obtained permission from the state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to add waste to the top of the dump.
That move is also being challenged in court.
Waste Management now has a decision to make: to ask the County Board of Commissioners to find that the addition of a single litter fence is enough to protect neighboring farms from litter flying off the dump, or to pull up stakes and slink away.
Let's hope Waste Management takes the N-R's editorial seriously and pulls the plug on its latest expansion bid.
