Soil & Water opposes landfill expansion plan

By DAVID BATES

Of the News-Register

In a Thursday announcement that caught McMinnville's Riverbend Landfill off guard, the Yamhill Soil & Water Conservation District came out against the landfill's proposed expansion, raising concerns about potential environmental impacts.

Manager George Duvendak said Riverbend was surprised the district would take a stand without first seeking input. He termed some of its findings misleading.

Backers of a November initiative that would prohibit the siting or expansion of landfills within 2,000 feet of a flood plain hailed the decision as vindication of their concerns.

The district is an arm of state government whose jurisdiction covers Yamhill County. It is governed by locally elected board members with strong ties to agriculture.

The 55-year-old district's responsibility is conservation of soil and water resources and the plants and animals they support. The district works closely with landowners on a variety of watershed projects.

Director Tim Steiber said the statement of opposition went through several revisions as it was passed among board members. That approach left some readers of the document wondering why it ends so abruptly, speculating a page was missing.

Steiber said the board is not opposed to landfills and appreciates the need for waste disposal. But the facility's proximity to the South Yamhill River raises concerns about contamination of groundwater supplies and encroachment on productive farmland, he said.

"They really wanted to show the public that it's a bigger issue," Steiber said of members. "We're making a bigger and bigger facility in a not-so-ideal place."

Riverbend currently occupies 160 acres lying between the river and Highway 18, about three miles southwest of McMinnville.

It announced plans two years ago to expand onto 87 adjacent acres. The requisite land-use package is scheduled to be reviewed by the Yamhill County Planning Commission in November.

The district said Riverbend has become more and more of a regional facility, as Oregon landfills have grown fewer in number but larger in size. "The expansion proposal is about serving those needs," it said in its statement.

The board cited the old Whiteson Landfill across the river, which has been a source of environmental problems for years, as an example of what can happen when a dump operator eventually pulls out and moves on.

"The potential for ground and surface water impacts from a landfill increase if that landfill is located in the flood plain," according to the statement. "This issue was debated prior to the 1992 Riverbend expansion proposal, and it is still the primary reason Yamhill SWCD opposes the current expansion."

Riverbend countered with a statement of its own. It noted Whiteson was developed, maintained and closed during an era of considerably looser regulation, making it an unfair candidate for comparison.

"It is not prudent to compare Riverbend Landfill to the perceived problematic Whiteson Landfill," Duvendak said in the statement. "Great strides over the past few decades have been made in landfill technology, and today's landfills are highly engineered."

He also said that the board's contention that leaks and other long-term impacts are likely is misleading. Today's landfills, he said, feature composite liners that will last, according to one industry study, for 1,000 years.

Riverbend has been operating at its present location since 1982, and no groundwater contamination has been reported during all that period, Duvendak said.

"The liner systems, landfill gas collection systems, leachate management systems and groundwater monitoring systems provide robust and effective protection of the environment and potential impacts on human health," he said.

The district also touched on one of the more controversial issues - acceptance of other people's trash.

Expansion opponents argue that Riverbend would not need to move into new territory were it not importing a large volume of waste from the Portland metropolitan area.

In its statement, the district framed the issue in a statewide context first, noting that more than a third of the trash buried in Oregon landfills during 2004 came from outside the state. Then it moved to the local situation.

"Riverbend started as a site to serve local needs and has grown to serve regional and out-of-state needs," the district said. "The expansion proposal is about serving those needs."

While Riverbend gets about half its trash from outside the county, Duvendak said out-of-state trash accounts for a minuscule proportion of all waste stored here - only two-tenths of one percent. Most of that consists of chicken feathers from a Foster Farms poultry processor in Washington, he said.

"Since Yamhill County farmers are a significant supplier of poultry livestock to that establishment, it seems appropriate that their county landfill dispose of the chicken remains that originated in Yamhill," he said.

Co-petitioner Lillian Frease was unavailable for comment this week. But the other initiative author, Ramsey McPhillips, hailed the district's statement as vindicating the concerns critics have been voicing for years. And he noted the early cells at Riverbend were not subject to today's stiffer regulations.

He maintained people have been "hoodwinked" by visiting the landfill and getting only one view. Concluding from a guided tour that everything is under control, he said, is akin to "going to the Green Zone in the height of the Iraq war and saying there are no bombs going off in Baghdad."

McPhillips said, "Citizens have got to stop listening to the misleading talking points of a Fortune 500 Texas Corporation when it says all is well. They need to listen instead to those who are not in a position to financially gain from the expansion, reputable organizations like Yamhill County Soil & Water."