Landfill Energy Proposal Generates Some Heat

When Deschutes County officials started considering the idea of turning Knott Landfill’s waste — the methane gas decomposing garbage generates — into renewable energy, officials at the southeast Bend dump thought it had a lot of promise.

“I think we will get to a safer place with the landfill sooner if we do that,” said Tim Schimke, county solid waste director. “In the meantime, we can generate enough gas to provide a revenue source and to help pay for that process as well as some excess to help keep our rates down.”

If all goes as planned, the landfill would inject steam to speed up the decomposition and a California company, called Waste to Energy Group, would increase the gas production.

The county will get paid possibly a quarter-million dollars for the landfill project.

Schimke says he knew there would be concerns among landfill neighbors.

“I do my best and try to educate and convince them that we are not increasing your risk,” Schimke said. “In fact, I think we are going to be decreasing their risk in the short term, as well as long term.”

But David Poboisk is not yet convinced.

“It’s a complicated project,” Poboisk said. “It has a lot of aspects, and we want to make sure that the information gets out there so people can decide if this project is the right project for Deschutes County.”

Poboisk asked Mike Ewall of the Energy Justice Network to speak about the dangers from landfill gas.

“People can start talking about whether this is a good idea to accelerate decades worth of landfill production and the production from it,” Poboisk said. “Explosive methane in that area, close to a school.”

Pobisk’s children attend High Desert Middle School, across 27th Street from the landfill. Poboisk, like Ewall, believes the school could be in danger.

“If I were a student there or a parent of a student, I would be very concerned about the increases of mercury and other types of chemicals that come from this project,” Ewall said.

Another concern: the chemicals, or leachate, that some neighbors fear could leak into the groundwater that many residents drink.

“If we can show we are adding 5,000 gallons of moisture but we are not seeing an increase in leachate for the last year or something like that, then we are not increasing the environmental risk at all,” Schimke said.

About a dozen people and two county commissioners were at Tuesday’s meeting. If you’d like to hear more and weigh in, they’re holding another presentation Wednesday at 5 p.m. at the Environmental Center in Bend.