Mega-Landfill Permit Sought Near Ritzville Meanwhile, Adams County Agrees To Send Its Own Garbage To Klickitat County Dump

Garbage politics are getting hot again in Adams County as two trash giants vie for new business.

Faced with an overflowing local landfill, Adams County officials have agreed to send the county’s 11,000 tons of garbage to Rabanco Regional Landfill’s mega-dump in Klickitat County, Wash.

Meanwhile, rival Waste Management of Washington submitted a permit application this week to operate a huge new regional landfill in Adams County.

The landfill may be used to bury 440,000 tons of trash a year that Seattle now is sending to a Waste Management landfill in eastern Oregon. But project delays and economic factors also could keep Seattle’s garbage going to Oregon.

The proposed Adams County dump would hold 90 million tons of trash on a 560-acre site near Washtucna. Waste Management obtained a land-use permit for the project in February 1994.

The company’s original timetable to open the facility has slipped. The new target date is early 1997.

Meanwhile, Adams County fast is running out of dump space.

“Our Bruce Landfill will be at maximum capacity in August,” said planning director Dick Owings.

The county’s two-year contract with Rabanco, which will be signed in mid-July, is renewable for up to 10 years.

Waste Management also bid on the Adams County long-haul contract but lost out to Rabanco.

Waste Management’s bid to haul the trash to Oregon was $52.20 a ton; Rabanco’s bid to take it to Klickitat County was $33.62 to $38.17 a ton, said Kami Snowden, county solid waste administrator.

The Adams County Health District has 30 days to review Waste Management’s application, said Brian Farmer of the state Department of Ecology.

The department then will review the application for compliance with state environmental laws. But the agency does not have the authority to determine whether a new regional landfill actually is needed, said Ellen Caywood of the department.

Last year, Washington state had 49 years of disposal capacity left in its solid-waste landfills, based on current rates of disposal, Caywood said.

Some 75 percent of that capacity is at Rabanco’s 40-million-ton landfill in Klickitat County, she said.

Ecology regulators have promised to take an active role in reviewing the Adams County project for its potential impact on ground water.

However, a landfill opponent says farmers fighting the dump are skeptical because Ecology is opposing a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposal to protect the aquifer underlying the site.

“We have no confidence in Ecology. They are totally ambivalent and are opposed to protecting our regional aquifer,” said Brett Blankenship of OPAL, the Organization to Preserve Agricultural Lands.

The state doesn’t hesitate to intervene when it feels the environment isn’t being protected, said Ecology spokesman Jerry Gilliland.

“I’m sorry they have some skepticism - they’ll just have to watch and see what we do,” Gilliland said.

, DataTimes