New Mandates on the Horizon for County Landfill
by Trinity Gruenberg
The Wadena County Commissioners held their regular meeting on Tuesday, September 22.
Construction and Demolition Landfill
Consultants from Stantec presented the final results of a nine‑county (Clay, Becker, Otter Tail, Wadena, Todd, Grant, Douglas, Stevens, and Pope) regional study on construction and demolition (C&D) waste in light of upcoming Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) rule changes. The proposed rules would require most current unlined C&D landfills—including Wadena County’s—to either close or be completely rebuilt with modern liners, leachate collection, gas control, and financial assurances, which would significantly raise costs.
The study evaluated three options: doing the minimum locally and relying on outside landfills, converting county sites to C&D transfer stations and hauling to private/compliant landfills, and building a large regional “hub‑and‑spoke” lined landfill system jointly owned by several counties. Because of very high capital costs and limited state funding, none of the counties chose to immediately pursue the regional hub option.
Wadena County’s preferred concept is to close its C&D landfill within about two years after the new rules take effect, continue taking small C&D loads mixed with household garbage at the transfer station, direct large C&D loads to outside landfills, maintain and slightly expand local C&D recycling, and advocate with legislators for funding and regulatory adjustments so the new mandates are financially realistic for rural counties...
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