Landfill Loses in Court, Wins at County

Last month, the Oregon Court of Appeals put the final nail in Riverbend Landfill's expansion dream coffin.  In the future, if the dump wants to expand, it must file a completely new application, one that solves the litter problem that effectively deep-sixed its most recent request.

Controlling the spread of litter from either the dump face or haulers' trucks will not be easy.  At the last hearing on the issue, at the County Board of Commissioners in May, 2020, Riverbend's own experts cited several industry studies that concluded that litter was a major problem with no available effective cure.  Waste Management, Riverbend's Texas-based behemoth corporate owner, will have to invent a new plan, one which will have to be drastically different from the plan the County rejected (with Court approval) back in 2020.

Before the Court's decision was issued, however, the County was already demonstrating that Riverbend still holds conservative Commissioners in thrall.

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, 2021, without notice or explanation.  Eventually, 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."

 

Subsequently, the dump asked the County to effectively reduce the annual payment it owed under its franchise agreement.  That agreement called for base payments of about $240,000 a year plus a premium based on tonnage accepted.  With no tonnage coming in, Riverbend naturally wanted to reduce its expenses.

To persuade the County to agree, however, Riverbend pretended that the possibility of expansion still existed--and not only that, but also that Metro might reverse its 2019 decision and begin sending waste to Yamhill County again.

Commissioners Berschauer and Starrett never questioned these assumptions.  Ultimately, the County approved a reduction in the annual payment of $50,000 a year until the base payment amount reached $50,000 annually, where it would remain until 2033.  This, with no guarantee whatsoever that the landfill will ever accept another ounce of County garbage again.  In fact, the Commissioners agreed to give Riverbend complete control of the waste it accepts over those years, which conceivably could be only waste from China or from favored garbage companies and nothing from local haulers at all.

 

At last report, DEQ had not yet determined whether a dump that does not accept waste is actually operating or has, in fact, closed.  Landfill opponents are rooting for the latter.