Trashy Talk – Eugene Weekly

On Aug. 20, the Lane County Commission voted 3-2 to move forward with a $150 million waste recycling facility in Goshen. The facility will recycle 80,000 tons of waste per year from the county’s Short Mountain Landfill.

Utility companies and waste collection companies say the situation will have serious consequences for them and that they will be forced to pass on the higher costs to taxpayers.

Commissioners Heather Buch, Pat Farr and Laurie Trieger voted in favor, while David Loveall and Ryan Ceniga voted against.

“It will create jobs. It will reduce methane in our region. It will have an anaerobic bioreactor that will process food waste, which is our largest source of greenhouse gases in the landfill,” Buch said of the CleanLane Resource Recovery Facility.

The waste recycling plant will sift through garbage, sorting organic waste into renewable natural gas and recyclable materials, helping to increase the county’s recycling rate.

To pay for it, the county is levying $35 million in bonds on taxpayers and raising trash collection fees for companies that haul it — while also selling the renewable natural gas it produces to a fossil fuel company.

Ceniga cited the costs to rural utilities and garbage companies as his reason for filing a motion to put the matter to a public vote. Buch, Farr and Trieger opposed.

Emerald People’s Utility District said it currently relies on energy generated from methane gas emitted by Short Mountain trash to meet between five and 10 percent of its energy needs.

Thomas Robbins, an EPUD Short Mountain Power Plant employee, explains that trash buried in the county landfill decomposes, releasing methane and other greenhouse gases. “It’s basically one big mountain of trash,” he says.

The methane is then collected through a series of pipes drilled deep into the mountain and laid across the landfill site.

About 70 percent of all methane emissions from Short Mountain are then directed into four 16-piston engines that generate power for EPUD customers. Thirty percent escape the mountain into the atmosphere.

But in December 2023, the county voted to enter into a partnership with Eugene-based Bulk Handling Systems (BHS) to design and manufacture machines to extract recyclable materials from the waste stream. CleanLane Resource Recovery Facility, formerly known as IMERF (Integrated Materials and Energy Recovery Facility), BHS has a contract to sell gas produced at CleanLane to Northwest Natural, a natural gas distributor based in Portland.

Lane County Public Works Director Daniel Hurley says it will save the county $300 million in landfill costs. EPUD says it will have to spend $20 million to meet electricity demand.

“Our customers are going to get hit twice by this,” EPUD CEO Kyle Roadman said. All Lane County residents will pay a $35 million tax bond imposed by the county with $23 million in interest, while he says EPUD customers will also have to pay higher electricity rates.

To finance the project, $15 million will come from a federal tax credit, with another $35 million paid by Lane County taxpayers, while the final $100 million will go to BHS, according to the county. BHS’s financing is split between a $68 million loan from JP Morgan Chase and a $32 million bond from the state of Oregon, which the company still needs to secure.

Lane County Public Works says it will be “the most technologically advanced waste processing facility in the country.” By accepting 80,000 tons of trash per year, diverted from Short Mountain, it will extend the landfill’s life from 70 to 90 years.

“Landfill is the single largest source of carbon emissions,” Hurley says. “This is an infrastructure investment that will have long-term benefits for the community.”

The project will create 65 new jobs and one million renewable natural gas equivalents per year.

In 2022, Lane County achieved a 52.9% recycling diversion rate — the highest in the state. The county is currently on track to achieve a rate of 63%.

The change will significantly impact the operation of EPUD’s Short Mountain Power Plant, which will dramatically increase costs to taxpayers, Roadman said.

Even though the landfill processes almost 300,000 tons of waste annually, the loss of 80,000 tons is significant enough to strain its capacity. “It begs the question of whether this is sustainable, given that it was designed to handle the majority of the county’s waste,” he says of CleanLane.

Most of these costs will also fall on taxpayers, which Roadman says is beyond disappointing.

EPUD says diverting trash from Short Mountain to CleanLane will cost the company $20 million over the next 20 years — more than twice its current landfill gas budget while maintaining the same level of energy production.

“That makes it very difficult not to raise utility rates,” Roadman says. Short Mountain makes up about 10 percent of the utility’s energy portfolio.

EPUD says the decision to build the new facility in Goshen rather than on Short Mountain — as originally planned — is due to the Short Mountain gas rights EPUD has had under an agreement with the county since the 1980s.

Hurley, however, argues that this is due to the lack of space to physically place the object in the landfill. He believes they would have to do a massive excavation at Short Mountain — which would cost significantly more money.

According to Charles Kimball, EPUD board chairman, the utility was more than willing to negotiate what to do with the gas rights under the existing agreement.

Kimball says that if BHS — a private, for-profit company — can’t turn a profit, it won’t survive long. “The county has turned away from public-public partnerships and toward public-private partnerships,” he says.

“Landfill gas is incredibly valuable there,” Roadman says. “We turned down some pretty lucrative offers to sell it and continued producing energy instead.

“They allow traditional fossil fuel businesses to continue operating at the expense of our taxpayers and county taxpayers.”

However, BHS will receive the first $5 million of all revenue from renewable natural gas sales, as well as the first $5 million from CleanLane recyclable materials. Thereafter, BHS will pay 25% of sales above $5 million.

“We will not be making money on this project,” Hurley says.

To pay off the $35 million bond and $23.6 million in interest, the county will raise landfill fees. The landfill fee is the fee that waste companies pay to take waste to a landfill or recycling facility. The city of Eugene approved a 4 percent increase, while the county approved an 11 percent increase.

Jake Pelroy, a representative for the Lane County Garbage and Recycling Association — a group of family-owned and operated waste hauling companies — says the county has raised and will continue to raise fees for dumping waste at the landfill and at the potential recycling plant.

The county is currently considering two six-percentage-point increases in 2024 and 2025, followed by two 11-point increases in 2026 and 2027.

Pelroy says all trash removal companies include this fee in their rates, essentially passing the entire cost on to the consumer.

However, EPUD says Lane County Public Works, the department behind the waste recycling project, has not been in contact with the utility. Pelroy says recyclers and trash haulers have also not been involved in discussions about the new facility.

Hurley says the county held several public meetings that EPUD was able to attend.

EPUD says it is considering legal action if the project is approved. Roadman says the utility will have to carefully consider its investment in Short Mountain.

“We want them to put it to a public vote. We want the public to hear the pros and cons and consider how expensive it is. If the public chooses to do that, we’ll be much more confident in raising our rates,” Pelroy said.

The next public hearing for the CleanLane Resource Recovery Facility will be September 17.

Related