Deschutes County eyes future: Where will trash go?
(Update: Adding video, comments from solid waste director; future of Knott Landfill property)
Knott Landfill – the only landfill in Deschutes County – is estimated to have about 10 years of remaining life. The county’s Solid Waste Advisory Committee has been developing a Solid Waste Management Plan, identifying, analyzing and recommending options for managing solid waste after the 135-acre landfill closes.
The identified options span the entire solid waste system, including recycling, composting, collection, transfer and disposal.
While a number of options for disposal have been investigated, including several new technologies for extracting energy from waste, two primary options have emerged: building a new landfill in the county or transporting Deschutes County’s trash to one of several large landfills near the Columbia River Gorge.
“This is a big decision, and an expensive one,” said Timm Schimke, the county’s director of solid waste. “Whichever option we choose, it is likely that the cost of disposal will increase. We really want to get the pulse of the community on the work that has been done thus far.”
“This landfill, being as close to the community as it is, we made the decision not to maximize its life,” he added. ” So we could build a pretty large mountain here, if we wanted to. We decided to keep it as low as possible to facilitate an end use, a park-type end use,” once it’s done taking the region’s trash.
Schimke said it will not be ball fields or soccer fields that need to remain flat, instead, it’ll be open walking space and dog parks, after the state-required cover and cap is in place.
Deschutes County Solid Waste will hold a community meeting to discuss operational and disposal options on Thursday at 5 p.m. The meeting will be held at the Deschutes Services Building, which is located at 1300 NW Wall Street in Bend.
Additional information, including cost estimates for each disposal option, is available online at www.deschutes.org/solidwasteplan.
