This sign along Oak Grove Drive in North Albany made me stop the bike one day last month.
Benton County officials will soon have to decide whether to allow the Coffin Butte landfill to expand. We all should think about the implications of that issue every time we throw something in the trash.
Republic Services’ revised application to enlarge the dump has been pending since last year. You can catch up on the process on the county’s website here. The decision is supposed to come in July.
The dump is the same distance from downtown Albany as it is from Corvallis, about 8 miles in each case. It’s much closer to the outer fringes of North Albany, where on rare occasions you can smell the odor of decaying garbage. On a bike ride along Oak Grove Drive, 3 miles from the landfill, I came across a sign against the expansion on May 25.
The landfill accepts refuse from Linn, Benton and several other counties in northwest Oregon. It receives roughly one million tons a year. But no matter how much it gets now, it will be full one of these years.
Republic Services projects a closure date for Coffin Butte between 2037 and ’39. That gives us maybe 14 years to find another place to dump our trash.
Either that, or figure out a way not to throw so much away.
There’s always talk about more recycling on the one hand and, on the other, generating less material for which there is no other use. But solutions are not anywhere close.
Much of what we discard is plastic of a kind that isn’t or can’t be recycled. In a landfill, that stuff probably lasts a thousand years. Yes, we should not throw it away. But just try to buy something that’s not made from or packaged in one form of plastic or another.
Could we dump all our plastic and other rubbish somewhere else? There is no realistic hope of opening a new disposal site around here. Maybe local disposal companies could arrage to ship our solid waste somewhere else. But at what cost?
It is strange that most local governments around here don’t concern themselves with this at all. They leave it all to Benton County. But what if Coffin Butte is prevented from expanding and has to close?
Albany and other jurisdictions have another decade or so to figure this out. Or less. (hh)
Opponents of the Coffin Butte expansion can be reached via the “.org” address on the sign.
ok, so let’s all stop making garbage. not going to happen. let’s all recycle everything – except for things that we can’t recycle and then where does that go? we should all be for limiting the amount of waste we create as a society, but when we do create waste it has to go somewhere. just saying “no” to waste is not the answer, and if you just say “no” then you need to provide a solution – what’s that?
Plastics can be incinerated. If done properly, all the chemicals not burned can be captured and disposed of in a landfill — at far less volume than now.
I predict that within ten years the Millersburg intermodal transfer station will be occupied with shipping garbage for landfill disposal in eastern Oregon.
Hi Bill,
Your prediction sounds spot on to me…intermodal transportation is one of the recommendations coming from the Regional Sustainable Materials Management Task Force.
Exactly, Bill, as half of Oregon belongs to the federal government, there is plenty of room for trash, at least until the sovereign state demands and gets the unconstitutional property back. None of us has to worry about that in our lifetime.
Bill you spot on, they are already talking about the backup plan of using the inter modell system in Millersburg , but everyone in linn has to get their take, shipping out garbage to Arlington would be great for linn county, forget Benton county, Commisioners are going to ok it in July, even if 75 per cent of county residents are against expanding, FOLLOW the money trail, linn and Benton county should split from the garbage business
If you google Denmark’s burn facility; you learn about CopenHill electric plant built in 2019. This waste-to-energy plant in Copenhagen can burn 70 tons of trash every HOUR and casually also filters the air and provides parkland, a ski slope and hiking trials
We visited there in 2023. Denmark is known to be environmentally responsible. This route has been proposed to BC Commissioners more than once–still they focus only on land fill..
If the city of Albany really wanted to be progressive they would try to pull recycling businesses here. It would be good jobs and help reduce our waste. The city has filled Coffin butte with the buildings it has razed. Most of them could have been restored and some were left for years until they could condemn them. Habitat for humanity uses the recycling cause (reduce, reuse, recycle, restore, repeat) to get people to do extra work and give them things to sell. If the so called “make the world a better place” businesses make money off of supposedly goodwill, why doesn’t the city jump all over it and stop milking the residents of Albany. We seen a sign that said “compost donated by the city of Albany” which was made with the yard waste that we pay them to take. We know they already grasp the idea of how to promote themselves as “working for
their people”. No one complains about a used car salesman if they actually sell you a decent vehicle. All the BS projects the city forces on us are all lemons. It’s too expensive to even make “lemonade” because our water bills are so high from paying fees for city “improvements” and projects we don’t need or want.
Compost sold by the city is produced at the sewage treatment plant, not from yard debris you pay Republic Service’s, not the city, to haul away.
That is even worse! lol We paid even more for it on our water bill than paying republic.
Hasso, I enjoy reading your posts and thank you for this one. My name is Bailey Payne and I work for Benton County. We’ve been working on a regional approach to the eventuality of Coffin Butte closing (2037 without the expansion, 2043 with). We initiated a Regional Sustainable Materials Management Task Force. Comprised of solid waste leaders from Lane County to Metro and west to the coast. The final report with the task force’s recommendations will be available in July. For anyone interested in getting a sneak peak, there will be a presentation about the work to the Benton County Board of Commissioners at their 9am meeting on June 17th. Here’s the link: https://bentoncoor.portal.civicclerk.com/
Bailey–perhaps you Benton County people would look at my post about Denmark’s innovative 2019 incinerator as a regional approach.
The Salem garbage burning plant next to I-5 at the Woodburn exit existed for many years with no complaints from the public that I am aware of, but it got shutdown by the DEQ, even though I have never seen a plume or smelled the plant. The CO2 generated by the plant is far less than the methane and whatever else is coming out of the landfills.
Al, the Corvallis landfill has used some of the Methane to run engines to produce electricity, and converts it to……………………….co2
Is that a bad thing?? No, but it is ironic isn’t it?
As a spokesman for the trees, “PLEASE quit trying to suffocate us”. Thanh you.
Aren’t we way past Al Gore’s “Tipping Point”? If he wasn’t lying, we’re doomed anyway.
I forgot to than Republic Services for generating “our air”. BTW, do you still violate Oregon Senate Bill 1565, passed in 2022 by refusing to accept cash for payment?