The numbers are going up in Clay County in terms of the solid waste that’s collected and disposed of. But that’s not all. So is the cost of completing the Resource Recovery Center to handle the 40,000 tons of garbage collected across the county each year has been ballooning, too – presenting a challenge that’s hard to dispose of.
County solid waste manager Kirk Rosenberger summarized the garbage situation for the Clay County Commission Tuesday. The enormous operation consumes no taxpayer funds, he said. Instead, it operates like a business, underwriting operations with tipping fees when collected waste is dumped at the county landfill four miles west of Hawley, along with service fees collected on state taxes and modest amounts based on recycled materials, paint and electronics.
According to Rosenberger, 109,359 pounds of hazardous household waste was received and disposed of in the past year, an increase of 3,021 pounds. The national average of such waste per household – including paint, stains, pesticides, herbicides and solvents, and other dangerous chemicals that can’t go in the regular garbage – is 30 to 40 pounds per year. Clay County households exceed the average, generating 47 pounds each in 2021.
The county accept6ed 175,282 pounds of electronics last year, including televisions, computers, monitors, cellphones and anything else with a circuit board. Rechargeable batteries and those containing mercury are also part of that total. Rosenberger noted that lithium batteries present a special challenge when mistakenly sent to the landfill; last year, two fires there were blamed on lithium units that were crushed, sparked and set other refuse alight.
Fluorescent tubes are collected separately. The county received almost 11,000 individual bulbs and 575 pounds of ballast in 2021.
Recyclable materials are sent to Minnkota in Fargo. In 2021, the overall total sent there was 4,481 tons, including 124 tons more sorted cardboard than the year before but 140 tons less commingled recyclables.
General garbage ends up in one of two destinations – the county’s 128-acre landfill site southwest of Hawley, where an additional cell (storage area) expanded its capacity in 2021, or the Prairie Lakes Resource Facility incinerator in Perham.
The growing number that concerns Rosenberger the most, however, has a dollar sign in front of it. The price tag for the joint city-county Resource Recovery Center now under construction northeast of the city has ballooned since it was first conceived in 2015. Originally the price was estimated at $12.5 million. Today, with skyrocketing materials costs, inflation and shipping issues, the total has risen to $21.5 million.
The problem is compounded, Rosenberger said, by the fixed amount of funding from the state. In 2020, the Legislature appropriated $7.5 million, envisioned as representing 60% of the total cost, but $1 million less that the county had requested. Today, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency’s share is barely reaches the 40% that the local government entities had been expected to pay.
Commission chair Jenny Mongeau supported the commission bringing the funding dilemma to the MPCA with a request for greater assistance. “It’s important to advocate for what inflation is doing to the local taxpayer,” she said. “We are going to incur enormous costs to finish this project.”
