Toss $700,000 a year?
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By Marshall Thompson
Standard-Examiner staff
Weber County: Regional landfill could save big money
OGDEN -- As Weber County considers shipping its waste to a new regional landfill, county officials say saving taxpayer dollars is their top priority.
If estimates are correct, the Northern Utah Regional Landfill Association, a collaboration of five counties, might save Weber County about $700,000 a year.
Currently, Weber County pays $30 a ton to dispose of its garbage, said Gary Laird, the county's solid waste manager.
About $6 of that pays for environmental programs, administrative overhead and a transfer station west of Ogden. The rest goes to Allied Waste, which trucks the trash to its private landfill almost 95 miles away in Tooele County.
In December, Box Elder County approved the formation of a collaboratively owned regional landfill just west of Corinne, fewer than 50 miles from Ogden.
NURLA is made up of Weber and Box Elder counties; the city of Logan, which represents Cache County; and Wasatch Integrated Waste Management District, which represents Davis and Morgan counties.
The association was designed to save the counties money by taking advantage of economies of scale, Laird said.
Weber County produces about 200,000 tons of garbage a year, while the other NURLA entities generate a combined 400,000 tons of garbage a year.
It's hard to tell exactly what residents are paying now to have Allied move the waste to Tooele County. Laird has no idea what percentage of the $24-a-ton fee goes to shipping beyond a fuel surcharge of about $2 a ton.
"I don't know how much of that is transportation," he said. "They never really shared that with me."
Logan and Box Elder County have already bought into the NURLA landfill at $2.5 million apiece. If Weber County joined them, Laird said, the tipping fee at the landfill would be around $10.50 a ton.
Fees for shipping to the NURLA site could be as high as $10 a ton, according to a Zions Bank feasibility study. Adding the $6 per ton for Weber's transfer station brings the final cost to about $26.50 a ton.
If the estimates are correct, NURLA would save Weber residents about $3.50 on each ton of garbage, or about $700,000 a year.
Weber County Commissioner Craig Dearden said the county is studying the potential savings and could make a decision as early as March.
Allied still has 30 years on its contract with Weber, but the county can get out of the deal if it buys its own landfill or finds a rate that is 10 percent cheaper.
"We feel we meet both requirements with NURLA," Laird said.
Weber is the key to making NURLA work because it could provide the bulk of the waste stream. Other NURLA members have been worried that Weber County might be using the threat of the regional landfill to force Allied to renegotiate.
"Our priority is to do what is best for the taxpayers of Weber County," Dearden said. "We are not using it as a tool to get a better deal with Allied."
But whether Weber County stays with Allied in Tooele or switches to NURLA in Box Elder County, the days of the local landfill are over, Laird said.
"There are no more prime landfill sites in Weber County for the long term, so for a long time now, we've been in transportation mode."
When Weber County's local landfill closed in 1997, it signed a contract with Arizona-based Allied to move garbage by rail to east Carbon County, about 150 miles away. In 2005, however, complications with rail cars left garbage piling up at the tracks for five days.
The county renegotiated with Allied to have its refuse trucked to the private company's landfill near Dell, in Tooele County, about 95 miles away. The NURLA site is about 50 miles from Ogden.
Davis and Morgan counties, represented by Wasatch Integrated, have been able to hold on to their local landfill longer than Weber. Their landfill in Layton is pinned between residential neighborhoods on the north and the east and two golf courses to the west.
Because of the proximity, Davis and Morgan residents have no need to maintain a transfer station and pay a very low rate for shipping, said Nathan Rich, director of Wasatch Integrated.
Their garbage fee of $26 per ton is further offset by burning landfill gases to make electricity, which is then sold to Hill Air Force Base.
The only problem, Rich said, is the landfill will be full in about 15 years.
"We would like to leave a little room in there for an emergency, so in about five or 10 years, we're going to have to go to a remote landfill."
Rich said he considered going to Tooele County with Allied, but prefers NURLA because it is closer and Davis and Morgan counties could have some ownership in it.
If the cost for Weber County to ship trash to NURLA ends up being equal to the cost of shipping to the Allied-owned site, NURLA would have the advantage, Dearden said.
"There is a benefit that I can see in being owners of the landfill," he said.
"But the key to all this is to get the best rate possible for Weber County taxpayers."
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