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Lyon County landfill ‘midway’ through lifespan

MARSHALL — The Lyon County landfill will be facing some mid-life decisions in the future, Lyon County Environmental Administrator Roger Schroeder said.

The overall “life expectancy” of the landfill was about 80 years, Schroeder said during the annual meeting of the Landfill Advisory Board.

“We’re sitting at about the midway point of that,” he said.

The infrastructure and remaining space in the landfill, as well as stricter rules on demolition waste and PFAS chemicals, would all factor into planning for the landfill’s future, Schroeder said.

Presenters at the meeting said priorities for the region’s next 10-year solid waste plan included finding ways to reduce the amount of waste brought to the landfill.

Schroeder started the meeting with an overview of activity at the landfill over the past five years.

“From 2020 on, we really honed in on our tracking system at the landfill to identify waste by county of origin,” Schroeder said.

The landfill took in an average of about 55,000 tons of garbage a year from 2019 through 2023, Schroeder said. Waste came from Lac Qui Parle, Lincoln, Lyon, Pipestone, Rock and Yellow Medicine counties, as well as from the Redwood/Renville Regional Solid Waste Authority. The majority of the tonnage came from Lyon County and RRRSWA.

“We can see we’re quite stable,” Schroeder said. The tonnage of municipal solid waste brought to the landfill didn’t fluctuate much from year to year. Meanwhile, tonnage of industrial waste, including contaminated soil, fluctuated a lot. Tonnage of industrial waste ranged from about 3,700 tons in 2022, to about 11,200 tons in 2023.

Schroeder said it was harder to get an exact breakdown of where industrial waste at the landfill came from.

“Industrial waste is something that we would like to be able to track better, but it’s hard to do when you have a hauler that runs a route that picks up maybe a business and an apartment complex,” he said. “Now it’s all in one waste hauler or one garbage truck and you can’t split it out. So, we’re trying to work especially with Rock County and RRRSWA to see if there’s a chance to identify specific industrial haulers that come to that facility.”

Schroeder said more construction and demolition waste was coming to the landfill from outside Lyon County over the past couple of years. This was due to closures of other construction and demolition landfills.

“It sounds like Pipestone is closing, Lac qui Parle closed … we’re going to start seeing more C&D waste come to our facility in Lyon County,” he said. There is an unlined demolition landfill near Russell in Lyon County, but a lot of C&D waste is transferred to Rock County, Schroeder said. “Rock County brings us garbage, and we send back C&D waste.”

If the state of Minnesota requires C&D landfills to have liners in the future, Schroeder said, “We are going to have some serious discussions in Lyon County about what we want to do with that facility in Russell.”

Reducing the amount of trash thrown out in the region was one priority for solid waste administrators as they work on a new 10-year solid waste plan, said presenter Dustin Hauschild.

“One of the biggest things is, with the garbage that’s going in there, we need to come up with plans for reducing and recycling,” Hauschild said. “In 2030, we are supposed to have in our plan how we can meet a recycling goal of 35%.”

So far, several area counties, including Jackson, Lyon, Murray, Nobles and Redwood and Renville counties were already meeting the goal of having 35% recycling rates or higher, he said. But it would be a challenge for some area counties to meet the 35% goal by 2030.

“For instance, Lincoln County — we as a total had 884 tons of recycling in 2022. The recycling rate was only 20.9%. So I’ve got to come up with just about 600 more tons that I’ve got to find for recycling,” Hauschild said. “That gets to be a challenge in Lincoln County, without a lot of industry. That is an easy place to get recycling.”

Hauschild said part of the discussion focused on possible ways to encourage more recycling of things like building materials and plastics. Having a regional solid waste coordinator might also help with outreach and education.

Stephanie Bethke-DeJaeghere said she works on outreach and education to encourage proper recycling and waste disposal in Lyon County. However, she said there were also lots of ways to help people reuse more items instead of throwing them out. One example was diverting egg cartons or Styrofoam coolers from the county’s recycling and household hazardous waste programs.

“We have started putting clean Styrofoam coolers … in our HHW, and they go out the door as fast as they come in again,” Bethke-DeJaeghere said.

Donating items like clothes or home items to thrift stores or the Habitat for Humanity ReStore also helps keep them out of landfills, she said.

“One thing that we’re working on — it’s been a process for about a year and a half — we’re working on a tool lending library here with the Marshall-Lyon County Library,” Bethke-DeJaeghere said.

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