Broken Promises

In 1980 when the original owners asked the County to approve Riverbend Landfill, and again when Waste Management took over the operation, many promises were made to the community.  A sampling is listed below, followed by the reality of what actually occurred.
 

Promise:  “The site will be kept in agriculture except for approximately 20 acres which will be taken out of agricultural production for landfilling purposes and when these 20 acres are filled, a new 20 acres will be utilized; the landfilled area will be re-converted to agricultural uses."[1]
 

Reality:  The current landfill covers 86 acres, none of which is now, or ever again can or will be, farmed.[2]  The total operations area of Riverbend now covers over 200 acres of high value farmland on the banks of the South Yamhill River.
 

Promise:  "The floodplain area next to the river will have been lifted out of the floodplain and become better farm ground."[3]

 Reality:  The landfill has excavated large quantities of soil from the flood plain area for use as daily cover on the landfill.[4]

Promise:  "No sight contamination will result from the use" as a landfill.[5]

 Reality:  The landfill, at its current 135 ft height above Highway 18, is highly visible from the highway and all surrounding roads and land areas for miles.[6]
 

Promise:  "Frequent cover virtually eliminates odor."[7]

 Reality:  When the landfill is operating, its “odor shed” reaches out onto the surrounding area for miles and can be smelled as far away as downtown McMinnville (2+ miles distant); it is often strongest at night when cover, if it were the answer, should be covering all the working faces.[8]
 

Promise: Noise will be "about the same as the farm machinery." [9]

 Reality:  Noise, coming from loud back-up signal bells on trucks and other equipment, tipping/dumping activity, and landfill vehicles and machinery working the face, begins as early as 4:30 am and often continues long after operations supposedly cease.[10]

Promise:  "The surrounding property owners do not object to the landfill operation."[11]

 Reality: 

• In 1980 neighboring property owners appeared at the Board of      Commissioners' hearing on the ordinance adopting the Comprehensive Plan      amendment that allowed the landfill to be sited and strongly objected to      the change in the Comprehensive Plan.[12] 
• In 1992 voters approved a county ballot measure opposing      Riverbend's designation as a Title V Regional landfill; the measure was      disqualified because of a technicality. 
• In 2008, when Riverbend filed its first application for      expansion, community members, no longer just “the neighbors,” formed Waste      Not of Yamhill County to publicly mount a campaign against expansion and      press for closure of Riverbend when it reached capacity in      2014.   
• In 2012 Waste Not of Yamhill changed its name to Stop the      Dump Coalition to recognize the inclusion of our many business and      individual partners in the campaign.
• To date: STDC has never stopped advocating for responsible      management and early closure of the dump!

Promise:  "The gas system is operating properly" (4-28-2016); "there are no issues with the landfill gas collection system" (10-26-2016); "all systems are functioning properly without any shutdowns or issues" (11-11-2016, 11-14-2016); "we take odor complaints very seriously" (7-25-2017, 2-10-18); "all temporary cover and closure activities are performed with DEQ oversight" (6-4-2019); "all areas being filled are subject to DEQ oversight" (6-6-2019); and "approved and regulated by the DEQ" (8-28-2019).[13] In April 2020, Riverbend sent the community "a brief update on what we’ve done in the last six months and our plans for the next six months" that did not mention the Notice Of Violation issued to RLI by the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) just months earlier.

Reality:    Riverbend's operation of its gas collection system in at least the four years 2016-2019 resulted in potentially serious harm to air quality in Yamhill County.

In January 2020 the EPA issued a Notice of Violation (NOV) to Riverbend citing the landfill for gas emissions in violation of its air quality permit going back to at least 2015.

According to the NOV, Riverbend failed to comply with basic monitoring requirements including failure to discover and report "multiple exceedances of 500 PPM methane" during required Surface Emission Monitoring (SEM); failure to report or inspect "areas of cracks or seeps in the cover" or "areas of distressed vegetation and cracks or seeps in the cover"; failure to maintain landfill cover integrity; allowing water to equal or exceed 50% of well height at multiple wells; failure to maintain cover "to the extent practicable" to collect and control landfill gas; failure to "monitor well RVBDV210 for pressure, temperature, and nitrogen between October 2016 and October 2018."  The NOV noted that the violations appeared to be ongoing. 

Promise:  RLI will institute random sampling of loads brought to the landfill and will remove prohibited waste.[14]

​

Reality: 

• Riverbend officials have publicly stated that no pre-sorting of municipal solid waste/non-construction-debris waste is done before loads are either trucked to the landfill or when they are dumped at the working face.
• For many years, no neighbor using the landfill for waste disposal reported seeing any monitoring or removal of prohibited waste, including TVs, appliances, and easily-recycled  materials, from the working face of the dump. 
• For a while, landfill employees conducted random monitoring, but items that are either outright prohibited or could have been removed for recycling prior to being “dumped” were still accepted.[15]

Promise:   Riverbend predicted that it would import 850,000 tons of garbage in the ten years from 1992-2001 and a total of 1,042,450 tons in the thirty-year period 1992-2021. Out-of-County waste would be limited to 45% of available volume over the site life. [16]

Reality:   Until Metro stopped sending waste to Riverbend in January 2020, the landfill accepted about 525,000 tons of municipal solid waste each year, 70% of which came from outside Yamhill County.  As of June 2021, when RLI stopped accepting non-Waste Management-hauled garbage, the landfill had collected approximately 12,250,000 tons of waste, more than 11 times as much garbage as originally promised.[17]

Promise: RLI will close by August 31, 2030.[18]

Reality: Who knows? It's DEQ (the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality) that's making this commitment, not Riverbend, and DEQ has made it clear that even under the closure permit, Riverbend can still attempt to expand. What happens next is anybody's guess.

Footnotes:

1. Exhibit A to Ordinance No. 236 [the Ordinance that originally approved the landfill], p 8.
2. Plan Amendment and Zone      Change Narrative, June 2008, p 36.
3. Exhibit A to Ordinance  No. 236, p 4.
4. Personal observation and  DEQ excavation permit correspondence.
5. Exhibit A to Ordinance No. 236, p 8.
6. Photographs submitted to      Planning Commission, 11-7-2013.
7. Exhibit A to Ordinance No. 236, p 6.
8. Personal observation; discussions with neighbors; comments from persons attending air quality      meetings with DEQ and landfill representatives.
9. Exhibit A to Ordinance No. 236, p 6.
10. Personal observation and      discussions with neighbors.
11. Exhibit A to Ordinance  No. 236, p 13.
12. Ordinance No. 236 text, p  2.
13. Emails written by former      Riverbend environmental officer Jeff O'Leary and current landfill manager      Nicholas Godfrey.
14. Riverbend Landfill Responses to Landfill Town Meeting Questions, June 11, 1992, p 6 (Q26).
15. Personal observation and      discussions with neighbors. 
16. Riverbend Landfill Responses to Landfill Town Meeting Questions, June 11, 1992, pp 1-2. 
17. 17. Per DEQ's permit notice for RLI's vertical expansion, March 2017: "Its [landfill's] permitted capacity is approximately 12,245,200 cubic yards. Under the current permit, the landfill is expected to reach capacity in mid-2017." Per Bob Schwarz, DEQ permit writer for RLI, 3-6-19: "The vertical expansion (the final grading plan modification) that we [DEQ] approved in 2017 provided for additional capacity of 490,000 cubic yards." 12,245,200 plus 490,000 = 12,735,200 cubic yards

18. Closure Permit issued by DEQ 8-31-22.