County landfill prepares for growth with $3M upgrade

On a busy day at the Flathead County Landfill last July, long lines of private vehicles and commercial trucks were forming as people tried to enter the landfill along U.S. 93 between Kalispell and Whitefish.

“We’ve had traffic backed up all the way to the highway, and in some instances parked on the highway because the line’s full to turn into the facility,” said Dave Prunty, public works director for Flathead County.

According to Jim Chilton, operations manager for the Flathead County Solid Waste District, on the busiest days he and some of his staff would throw on safety vests and direct private vehicles onto an alternate route that would not require them to pay the fee to use the landfill.

Prunty said approximately 600 vehicles were entering the landfill on busy days last summer – when “all the tourists are in town” and “residents are making as much garbage as they’re going to make” – all of them using one narrow entrance and one outdated scale.

But finally, the problem is being solved.

Construction is underway on a $3 million project to expand and modernize the landfill entryway and container site. If all goes according to plan, by the end of this summer customers will no longer have to sit in long lines to enter the landfill.

The facility “has never taken anything on like this before,” Prunty said.

The Flathead County commissioners approved the project in June 2019 as the crisis was coming into view and the landfill was seeing a significant increase in usage. According to data provided by the Solid Waste District, the amount of material deposited in the landfill was about 100,000 tons in fiscal year 2014, but rose to over 142,000 tons in fiscal year 2019.

The number had actually crept up to 128,000 in 2007, but the recession that began in 2008 eased the burden on the landfill, with the tons of material deposited back below 100,000 in the early years of the 2010s.

These numbers should continue to grow, Prunty said, as the valley’s population creeps above 100,000 and the tourism industry continues to boom.

Meanwhile, the current scale and scale house were built about 30 years ago and are in poor condition.

For the new entrance, Prunty explained, “We’re building a fork, with three prongs coming into the facility to split people up.”

The three prongs of the new landfill entrance are gates for different types of customers — residential customers using container sites; contractors; and hauling companies and commercial trucks, including the county’s garbage trucks.

The two lanes for contractors and garbage trucks will have new 70-foot truck scales.

“The garbage companies are very excited about it, because they shouldn’t have guys in line twiddling their thumbs,” Prunty said, adding some garbage haulers will be able to make more trips per day.

Trucks will have a transponder on them, signaling their weight to a computer in the scale house. The weight will be recorded electronically.

The driver “will get in and get out really quickly and we don’t even have to talk to them; the computers will do the talking,” Prunty said.

The new scales will be hydraulic, a significant technological upgrade over the current “electric load-cell” scales.

“We went and talked to some folks who had them (hydraulic scales) and they said, ‘these are the ticket,’” Prunty said, adding the accuracy is supposed to be as good or better than the electric load-cell scale.

The landfill had no shortage of issues with the electric scale. Road salt and winter weather have corroded the scale over the years, and because the scale mechanisms and wiring are below ground, Pruty said, cleaning it is very difficult.

Plus, there is no backup if the scale is not working.

“When our scale’s down, we’re screwed. We generate revenue to run this landfill by our scale. When it’s down, it’s a problem,” Prunty said.

The new hydraulic scales are above ground and can just be hosed off, while the scales can run using a gas-powered generator if the landfill ever loses power. In addition, Prunty explained, the ramps and the scale deck have “in-floor heating” so there will never be icy conditions on the scale.

Phase three of the upgrade will involve moving a number of operations from the south side of the entrance to the north side to be closer to the residential-customer entrance. These include the container sites, the metals pile and recycling operations. There will also be a freon-extraction facility, though that will be bidded on separately.

The county will open bids for phase three on March 13 – there have been five bids – and according to Chilton it should be completed along with the entryway by the end of the summer.

Clearing the land south of the entryway – with the exception of the junk-vehicle facility and fuel island – will allow “further expansion for landfill operations in the future,” Chilton said.

The landfill is counting on additional land to carry it into the future. The new container site will take up part of the landfill’s 24-acre parcel north of the entryway, Chilton said, while the landfill is in the process of purchasing 13 acres to the north of that space.

Prunty said he is trying to set up the landfill so it can still serve the community 100 years from now. “In garbage, it [thinking long-term] is all you do,” he said.

He and Chilton do not expect the county would be able to license another location for a landfill, so they have to make sure the current landfill can handle an ever increasing load of garbage as the county continues to grow.

“They’ve got an area to work with that can be utilized,” Prunty said, adding that things could change with new technologies that dramatically alter the industry.

“If we don’t plan for the future this community’s gonna get caught in a situation that’s not good, because when you don’t have space or a plan for your solid waste,” Prunty said. “Now all of a sudden … you’re racking up costs because you’re in an emergency situation.”

Reporter Colin Gaiser may be reached at 758-4439 or cgaiser@dailyinterlake.com