Local garbage haulers voice concerns over Lane County's new IMERF facility - nbc16.com

Local garbage haulers voice concerns over Lane County's new IMERF facility

EUGENE, Ore. — In early December of 2023, the Lane County Board of Commissioners voted 3-2 to approve the new Integrated Materials and Energy Recapture Facility(IMERF for short) in hopes of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

In that timespan, garbage haulers like Sanipac, Apex, and others have voiced concerns about the $150 million price tag for the facility, and how that would impact their customers.

Bulk Handling Systems, the company the County is collaborating with on the facility, will cover $100 million of the project, with $35 million being paid for by the county through garbage disposal tipping fee rate increases.

Last Friday, the Lane County Garbage and Recycling Association released a letter detailing those concerns further and threatening legal action if they're not brought to the table for future discussions.

Ecosystems Transfer and Recycling, one of the groups who signed off on the letter, services 3,000 customers in Veneta, and voiced concerns over those increased tipping rates, and that the price would be inevitably passed on to their customers, potentially pricing out many in the area.

"When prices increase in rural communities, less people are able to afford garbage service, and it makes it inaccessible," said Katy Pelroy, the operations manager at Ecosystems. "Therefore, garbage gets dumped into the woods in the rural areas. People are burning their garbage, and overall it just reduces the recycling being able to be brought to these facilities."

The association cites an 11% increase in tipping fees, which the county rebuffed.

"We will be raising rates at the landfill, so that's where the haulers dispose at, and ultimately that will trickle down to ratepayers that are paying their garbage rates at the curb, but it's pretty modest," said Dan Hurley, the Lane County Public Works Director. "We're looking at four years of rate increases that'll average 50-60 cents for an average household per month."

According to Pelroy and Hurley, those rate increases will start in July of this year, with a second rate increase occurring in July of 2025.

Construction on the IMERF is set to begin at the end of 2024.