Photo by Deb Gau Landfill staff work to cover a pile of trash at the Lyon County Landfill on Tuesday afternoon.

MARSHALL — Waste haulers from southwest Minnesota brought a total of about 59,000 tons of garbage to the Lyon County landfill in 2021. It’s an increase from past years, said speakers at Tuesday’s Lyon County Board meeting.

“Tonnage is up about six to six-and-a-half percent from last year,” said Fred Doran of Burns & McDonnell Engineering.

But even with more trash going in, the landfill is filling up about as fast as expected, said Lyon County Environmental Administrator Roger Schroeder. The current usable area of the landfill is calculated to fill up in 2024.

Schroeder and Doran said the county needed to start planning now to build the next phase of the landfill. The county will also need to prepare an application to renew its solid waste permit, which expires in July 2024.

Doran and Schroeder updated county commissioners on plans to open a new section of the landfill. The new usable area would be built in phases, Doran said. Having a phasing plan will be an important part of the county’s solid waste permit application. The landfill phasing plan and the permit application could be worked on at the same time, Doran said.

Schroeder said the Lyon County landfill received about 59,000 tons of waste in 2021, compared to 55,500 tons in 2020.

It was hard to pinpoint an exact reason for the increase, Schroeder said. One possibility was that recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic affected the amount of waste being disposed of in the region. The amount of garbage that went into the landfill in 2020 didn’t increase much from 2019, he said.

The landfill is now also serving more customers than in past years, with Redwood and Renville counties bringing waste to Lyon County. However, Schroeder said it wasn’t yet clear how either a bigger customer base or the pandemic was affecting the amount of trash brought to the landfill. The next year will be helpful for shaping projections, he said.

Of the waste brought to the landfill in 2021, about 55,000 tons was household waste, as opposed to industrial or construction waste, Schroeder said. About 30% of the municipal waste received by the landfill last year was from Lyon County. Another 28% came from the Redwood Renville Regional Solid Waste Authority. Lac qui Parle, Yellow Medicine, Lincoln, Pipestone and Rock counties all brought waste into the landfill, but in smaller amounts.

After discussion, county commissioners approved two separate consulting agreements with Burns & McDonnell. One agreement was for work on the county’s solid waste permit renewal application at a cost of $135,000. The other was for work on the landfill phasing plan at a cost of $70,000. Schroeder said funding for both tasks will come from the landfill’s enterprise fund balance.