If county drew in more customers, landfill rates could plummet

Got trash, Big Horn Basin residents? Park County would love to take it at the county’s lined landfill in Cody.

Hoping to bring in as many new customers as possible, Park County commissioners plan to soon pitch counties and municipalities across the Basin on the benefit of bringing their trash to the landfill south of Cody.

As commissioners see it, turning the Park County Regional Landfill into a truly regional trash hub could be a win-win: bringing down rates for local residents while offering other counties the best deal around.

Park County currently charges a tipping fee of $78 per ton. But if Thermopolis, northern and southern Big Horn County and the City of Powell all started trucking their refuse to Cody, Park County officials figure the rate could drop to around $50 a ton.

That would mean significant savings for City of Cody, Meeteetse and rural Park County residents who currently use the county’s landfill system.

The open question is whether Park County can compete with the low rates offered by the Billings landfill, where the City of Powell takes its trash. The City of Billings currently charges out-of-area customers around $26 a ton — nearly 67 percent less than Park County’s rate. The price difference is more than enough to cover the cost of hauling the trash the extra distance; Powell leaders have said they’re saving between $120,000 and $140,000 a year by going to Billings instead of Cody.

The more trash the Cody landfill receives, the lower the rates will go. But it will take a pretty big influx of trash to make its prices competitive with Billings.

If only Powell and its 5,000-6,000 tons of annual trash returned to Park County’s landfill system, the county’s rate would drop to around $65 a ton. Billings would stay significantly cheaper.

“So why would they [Powell] come to us?” Commissioner Jake Fulkerson asked at a May 9 meeting.

“Exactly,” said Park County Landfill Manager Tim Waddell, adding that, “The bottom line is, we can’t compete with $25 a ton, 100 miles away.”

However, the local landfill landscape will change in the coming years. Thermopolis’ landfill is nearing the end of its life and the North Big Horn County Landfill in Cowley — which accepts trash from across all of Big Horn County — is only permitted for a couple more years.

Under the current rates, Billings would likely be the cheapest option for those communities, too. However, if all of those communities decided to go to Cody, rates here could drop to around $50 — suddenly putting Park County in the same ballpark as Billings, according to the county’s calculations.

“I think the only place it’s going to work is if they all came here,” said Commissioner Tim French.

Fulkerson offered later that, “We got to get all four or it doesn’t work. All or none.”

Commissioners expressed excitement about the prospect of landfill rates dropping for local residents.

“You’re putting in the citizen’s pocket probably $700,000 a year that could be spent other than a place to chuck your garbage,” French said of a drop in fees.

“That’s a lot of dollars back into the economy,” Commissioner Loren Grosskopf added later.

Park County leaders also believe they have a rock-solid service: having the permits in place to operate and expand the Cody site for decades.

“We’re locked in for a long time,” said French.

“Even Billings doesn’t have that,” said Grosskopf, noting how some neighbors objected to the city’s pending plans to expand its landfill.

Commissioners indicated they likely would want to charge a small premium on trash that comes in from out of county — perhaps a couple dollars per ton “host fee.”

“We’d just have to wrestle with that number for being the dumping ground for the Basin,” French said.

According to numbers presented to the commission, the county might be able to lower its rate to around $75 a ton without changing anything. That’s because closing up old trash pits in Cody, Powell, Clark and Meeteetse cost millions of dollars less than the county initially expected.

The City of Cody and Keele Sanitation — the county’s two largest customers — are three years into eight-year contracts with the county; Waddell indicated he doesn’t want to revisit the rates “until we negotiate again.”

All of the county’s cost projections come from an extraordinarily complicated spreadsheet compiled by Park County Engineer Edwards and the landfill staff. It factors in many variables and makes projections for decades into the future. The tabulations suggest tipping fees could drop as low as $49 a ton if Cody was taking Big Horn County’s, Powell’s and Thermopolis’ trash. However, that estimate is probably overly optimistic, because the Cody landfill would need more staff to handle the higher volume of trash.

“I mean, we’re going to have some more expenses,” said Waddell.

He figured that the Cody site could handle another 5,000 tons a year with no problems — maybe even 10,000 tons — but adding 20,000 tons or so from across the Basin would require changes.

Thermopolis kick-started the recent discussion by requesting a quote from the county. Commissioners indicated that, in addition to answering Thermopolis’ request, they’ll send letters to trash producers across the Big Horn Basin to try enticing them to use the Cody landfill.