The sun is setting on the Grant County Landfill

EPHRATA — The Grant County Landfill is predicted to be at capacity by 2032, causing public works employees to scramble for a plan.

The landfill is sectioned into four cells, Grant County Public Works Director Sam Castro said. Since the first two were reaching maximum, Castro had to start construction on the third cell, after he started in the position in May 2020. It is set to be operational within a month.

Because the county was in such dire need, the $2.2 million construction cost came out of the day-to-day operational budget, Castro said. The money will be replaced by the higher dumping fees this year.

This is not an ideal business model, he said.

“The county had not anticipated, prepared, strategically planned the necessity to build another cell,” he said.

To not repeat the problem, Castro proposed to the Grant County Board of Commissioners raising fees to cover construction for cells three and four this year. But because covering cell three was already higher than the consumer price index, they elected against it, he said.

That means this problem will recur, Castro said, and it gets worse.

“Imagine today being 2032, and there is no plan for what we do now,” he said.

Castro has been working with the Solid Waste Comprehensive Plan, he said, which is a document addressing short- and long-term needs for solid waste. This requires a massive collaboration between communities in Grant County for decision approval.

“I like to be a forward thinker, strategic thinker, strategic planner, because my job is to serve these elected people,” Castro said. “There is no current plan for future land acquisition and development.”

There are two potential solutions to this problem, he said, with pros and cons to both. The first, of course, is building another landfill. Some agencies oppose additional waste streams for hygienic issues, management difficulties and permitting nightmares, he said. An alternative is to build a transfer station to load the waste onto 53-foot trailers and haul it to a county with more space.

Prior to this position, Castro worked as the public works director for Pend Oreille County, he said. That county opted for a transfer station as opposed to a landfill.

According to the Department of Ecology, dumping fees in Pend Oreille County were five times more expensive than in Grant County in 2019.

None of these options is going to be cheap, Castro said.

“We’re going to need to collect the revenue and start collecting it now so that we don’t have a $50-75 million deficit when that time comes,” he said.

The Solid Waste Advisory Committee, made up of 11 government officials, stakeholders and citizens of cities across Grant County, is reviewing the options, Castro said.

“(The landfill) is going to expire in 2032 if I’m lucky, maybe a little sooner, and we have to devise a plan.”

Sam Fletcher can be reached via email at sfletcher@columbiabasinherald.com.