(Radio Iowa) – Iowa has some three dozen major landfills, several of which are nearing the end of their lifespans. Garrett Prestegard, president of the Iowa Society of Solid Waste Operations, says a survey last year found about a third of Iowa’s landfills are less than 30 years from being filled up and forced to close, and once that happens, communities will have to find other places to send their trash.
Prestegard says, “It’s likely going to lead to waste in the state being funneled to either out-of-state landfills or larger landfills in Iowa that have room to expand their facilities in the future.” It’s difficult for landfills to expand and even harder to build new ones. They need the right geology and hydrology, lots of permits and clearances at the federal, state and local levels. Some landfills are seeing their lifespans cut short by wreckage from floods and other natural disasters.
Joe Horaney, interim director of the Cedar Rapids Linn County Solid Waste Agency, says the 2020 derecho caused a lot of damage in the region and so did a big hailstorm earlier that year. “More than 80,000 roofs had to be replaced here in eastern Iowa,” Horaney says, “so we got a lot of those, too, so every time there’s a hail event, all that material ends up in the landfills.”
Horaney says Linn County’s landfill could fill up by 2038, six years earlier than expected. A proposed expansion would buy more time, but eventually, garbage will be transferred to another landfill, and as he points out, hauling trash longer distances costs more. Horaney says, “If we want to do everything the same, apples to apples, as we do right now, and we go to transfer, the tipping fee will practically double, so instead of being $50 per ton, it will be $100 per ton.”
The Resource Recovery Plant in Ames uses conveyor belts, shredders and magnets to pull out metals and converts burnable trash into fuel for the city’s power plant. The remaining waste goes to a landfill. The plant will be retired next year and a new facility will act as the central hub for collecting and transferring trash, recycling and yard waste.
Supervisor Mark Peebler says the city is ramping up services, like curbside recycling, to reduce the waste stream as much as possible. Peebler says, “There is a lot of material that could be reused, reduced, recycled, and recovered before it goes to the landfill that may not be happening as much as what it should be.”
An Iowa D-N-R study found over 70 percent of the material in Iowa landfills could have been diverted.
