Landfill Proposes Lopsided License Extension

"Fifty thousand a year or nothing."

That was how Waste Management PR specialist Jackie Lang described the "deal" that Riverbend Landfill offered the County last week:  Give us what we want, and we'll pay you a flat fee of $50,000 a year -- or we will pay nothing.  Nevermind that the current license agreement requires the landfill to pay upwards of a quarter million dollars a year on a sliding scale.

What Riverbend wants is a complete giveaway by the County:  a 20-year agreement, the flat fee, and Riverbend to have both total control over what waste it accepts, including volume, kind, and source, and the exclusive right to terminate the agreement.  The County and its residents get nothing.  Oh, except more litter, crop-ravaging birds, noise, dirt, heavy truck traffic, and polluted water and air.

The Board of Commissioners questioned Lang and WM attorney Tommy Brooks closely about the landfill's decision to refuse waste from self-haulers.  Riverbend had told the state Department of Environmental Quality that it would be accepting ordinary municipal solid waste from time to time, but Lang and Brooks explained that the waste would come only from Waste Management's hauling subsidiary in Newberg -- not from locals or from Recology, the other hauler in the County.

Lang and Brooks also dangled the elusive "green tech" that Waste Management has promised the County for years, although Brooks admitted that no specific green tech would be identified until Riverbend expands.  When pressed by Commissioners, they refused to identify any successful technology developed or implemented by Waste Management on a large scale, pointing only to decades-old investments in InEnTec (pyrolysis) and Agilyx (reverse engineering plastics into oil), both of which operate on small scales.

Lang and Brooks also touted the renewable energy Riverbend provides by processing methane, a climate-threatening landfill byproduct, into electricity.  McMinnville Water & Light uses the electricity the landfill generates, but, according to Riverbend officials, has in the past refused to accept more even though the landfill could produce more.  Excess methane is flared away.

Riverbend also emphasized its investment in its physical plant, $18 million over many years plus a claimed $1,000,000 recycling area (which consists of a concrete platform people drive onto and then toss their recyclables into bins down below, usually with no assistance from Riverbend personnel).  This actually seems puny, far less than a modern landfill requires to function well.  A 2005 study of landfill construction costs estimated that costs could run as high as $800,000 per acre on flat, cleared ground, which would require a minimum $64 million investment at Riverbend.

No mention was made of the timing of Riverbend's request, with the Court of Appeals' ruling on its expansion denial appeal due within weeks.  Nor did the Board consider sending the proposed amendment to SWAC, the County's Solid Waste Advisory Committee, for comment and recommendation.

The Board of Commissioners eventually asked County Counsel Christian Boenisch to negotiate a proposal with Riverbend.  They hoped he could bring one back to the Board at its July 29th meeting, but the matter is not included on the Board's posted agenda.

Citizens can weigh in by sending written comments to BOCINFO@co.yamhill.or.us or by US mail to 535 NE Fifth Street, McMinnville, OR  97128.

Riverbend Pushes "Little Lie"

If the "Big Lie" is that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen, the "Little Lie" is that Riverbend Landfill's expansion plans are alive and well.

 

In fact, Yamhill County Commissioners voted in 2020 to deny the dump's request to expand.  The Commissioners' decision was upheld by LUBA, the state Land Use Board of Appeals.  Riverbend did not appeal that part of LUBA's ruling.

 

Therefore, expansion is dead.

 

That hasn't stopped Riverbend from telling the Commissioners in writing this week that its expansion proposal "remains pending before the Oregon Courts" and that there is an "interim period before a final resolution on the closure or expansion of the Disposal Site."

 

As reported earlier, the landfill stopped accepting ordinary garbage (ie, municipal solid waste, or MSW) from garbage companies and self-haulers alike in mid-June, without notice or explanation.  Subsequently, Riverbend told the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) that it needed to add beneficial soils to its lower slopes to create a sort of bench on which to pile more MSW.  Riverbend told some local jurisdictions that this process might take "months or years."

 

DEQ has apparently accepted the dump's new status without comment or question.

 

Riverbend's mendacious audacity came to the Commissioners in the form of a proposed amendment to its County license to maintain the dump.  The landfill sought a 20-year term with a flat fee of $50,000 paid to the County per year, without regard to the amount of waste hauled to the dump.  Riverbend also asked for complete control of the waste it accepts over those 20 years, so conceivably it could accept only waste from China or from favored garbage companies and nothing from local haulers at all.

 

The proposed amendment was originally scheduled to be reviewed by the Commissioners today, but Board Chair Mary Starrett asked that the item be pulled from the agenda and rescheduled for next week (July 22, 2021, at 10:00 AM) so the Board can get some additional information from Waste Management, Riverbend's Texas-based corporate owner.

Interested readers can view Board of Commissioners meetings live on Zoom.  A link to each meeting is posted in the upper right-hand corner of that meeting's agenda; the agenda can be found at https://www.co.yamhill.or.us/meetings a day or two before the scheduled meeting.  Meetings are recorded, and links to past meetings are available on the same page.

Anyone can comment on the proposed license amendment by sending an email to BOCINFO@co.yamhill.or.us before the July 22 meeting.  A copy of the amendment is available on pages 99-101 of the packet for the July 15, 2021, meeting.