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Debate Grows As State Landfill Use Increases

Posted on: Thursday, 29 September 2005, 18:00 CDT

By Dennis Lien, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.

Sep. 29--For a quarter of a century, Minnesota has followed a preferred garbage hierarchy: First reduce consumption, then recycle or convert trash into energy, and, only as a last resort, throw it in a landfill.

But for much of that period, the state has been going in the opposite direction: Recycling rates have plateaued or risen slightly; publicly supported waste-to-energy plants have struggled or failed, and landfill dumping has almost tripled.

Now, with separate proposals to expand two large metro-area landfills under consideration, there's renewed debate over the state's solid-waste future. With no law governing where garbage should go, some observers fear Minnesota will continue slipping backward, embracing an older form of waste disposal that, while cheaper, is far more wasteful and poses groundwater contamination risks.

"If we open up all of this capacity, (landfill owners) are going to have to make money," said Sherry Enzler, former head of the Minnesota Office of Environmental Assistance. "The way to do that is to fill the landfills. And that would take away from recycling and waste-to-energy."

Between 1993 and 2003, how Minnesotans got rid of garbage changed dramatically.

Recycling increased slightly. But garbage taken to processing plants fell from 37 percent to 21 percent. And landfill-bound municipal solid waste -- everything from tree trunks to food scraps -- rose from 18 percent to 36 percent.

During that period, garbage nearly doubled even though the population increased by only 13 percent. Volume spiked because the average person generated more garbage in 2003 than in 1993.

Refuse handled by garbage-processing mills dropped, from 1.6 million tons to 1.2 million tons. Garbage sent to landfills, meanwhile, rose sharply, from almost 800,000 tons to 2.2 million tons. Most of that material could have been recycled or composted.

"We've gone to the expedient option, which is landfilling, and it really is something that we determined 25 years ago was not prudent," said Anne Hunt, environmental coordinator for the Minnesota Environmental Partnership, referring to a preferred approach established by the state in 1980 and affirmed in 1998.

There's no single reason why that's occurred.

Economics and a 1994 federal court decision striking down state attempts to control transport of garbage played big roles. Not only is it cheaper to dump garbage in landfills than to sort and process it, but companies now can take it anywhere they want.

Observers also cite other factors, such as growing market share by two large haulers, Waste Management Inc. and Browning-Ferris Industries Inc., both of which have their own landfills, and less state support for recycling. Besides using state landfills, haulers have taken millions of tons of trash to inexpensive landfills just across the border in Wisconsin and Iowa.

With more haulers moving to single- or double-sort recycling, more recycled material also gets soiled or broken and must be tossed in a landfill. Then there's intense competition among haulers.

"The more accessible and cheaper the landfill, the harder it is to get waste higher on the hierarchy," conceded Zack Hansen, manager of the environmental health section of the St. Paul-Ramsey County Department of Public Health.

As transportation costs have risen, haulers have a reason to stay closer to home.

Over the past year or so, Waste Management has asked the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) for permission to expand its Burnsville and Elk River landfills, extending their projected three-year and five-year lifespans by 20 years. No decisions have been made.

John Kellas, Waste Management's director of landfill operations for Minnesota and Iowa, said the two landfills are clearly running out of room and need more capacity. Expanding them instead of building a new one, he added, is less expensive, less controversial and still safe.

Today's landfills, he emphasized, are vastly superior to the open dumps of the past, which led to widespread groundwater contamination problems.

But expanding landfill use, critics say, has consequences.

As garbage has gone into landfills, they say less attention is paid to recycling. For example, the annual state contribution to help counties recycle held steady at $14 million, with no inflationary increases, throughout the 1990s. Then, in 2003, the Legislature cut the amount by more than $1 million.

Less waste also has gone to waste-to-energy plants, operations built in the 1980s to separate refuse and burn portions. About 10 percent of the garbage reaching those plants eventually is dumped in landfills as ash, with the rest converted into energy.

Many of those plants, which must meet expensive and stringent air-quality standards, have struggled to make ends meet, and some have gone out of business. None has been built since the late 1980s.

In August, Ramsey and Washington counties reduced the "tipping" fee for haulers from $39 to $34 a ton to encourage more waste to be dropped off at NRG's Newport plant. The plant hasn't been able to process enough waste to break even and must be subsidized by taxpayers.

Trudy Richter, executive director of the Minnesota Resource Recovery Association, said several other waste-to-energy plants serving the Twin Cities also aren't getting enough garbage and face uncertain futures. The Hennepin County garbage burner, she said, is an exception.

"We can't possibly have tipping fees close to what's at the landfills," Richter said. "Even with county subsidies, haulers can still take it to Wisconsin and Iowa for less than what it costs to take to a waste-to-energy facility."

Several of the plants are nearing the end of their contracts with counties.

"It's fair to say the counties are hesitant to continue to subsidize them," Richter said. "And the state is doing nothing to ensure the hierarchy is followed."

"There's a lot of speculation out there (counties) might not re-enter contracts with NRG," added Art Dunn, strategic planning director for the MPCA. "I think there is some uneasiness on the part of the waste-collection industry."

Fearing NRG's Elk River plant could fail, Benton, Stearns and Sherburne counties are mulling whether to build a shared garbage burner.

The plant could cost up to $90 million and require a much higher dumping fee than what Waste Management's nearby Elk River landfill charges. But members of the tri-county solid waste management commission aren't daunted.

"The board believes that continued resource recovery is in our best interest," said Dave Lucas, solid waste administrator for Sherburne County. "Not only for today, but for the future."

As head of the Solid Waste Management Coordinating Board, Dick Stafford is no fan of landfills. Yet he supports Waste Management's two expansion proposals.

"I think we need them, at least for right now," said Stafford, a Washington County commissioner.

But he winced at the trend toward more landfill use.

"We've got over 100 landfills that are closed and contaminated and the state is facing a $500 million bill to clean them up," he said. "Modern landfills are different, they're better, or so the operators claim. Still, they only guarantee them for 30 years."

Different strategies, such as more organized public collection, in which communities impose tighter collection and disposal requirements, may be needed, he said.

With foreign markets aggressively seeking recyclables such as paper, Minnesota's reliance on landfills is wasteful and costly, according to the MPCA's Dunn and Don Kyser, an MPCA engineer.

"Somehow, we have to ask our citizens and businesses to do it differently," Kyser said. "The recycling capacity is there."

Regardless, there's little to nothing the state actually can require, according to Dunn.

"The hierarchy is a listing of preferred methods," Dunn said. "There's no teeth. All we can do is provide whatever assistance or incentives to have people do stuff other than put it in the ground."

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Copyright (c) 2005, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.

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Source: Saint Paul Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minn.)

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