Sioux County Landfill Plans Halted; Roughly One Year Left For Gering Landfill’s Life Expectancy

For more than a decade, city leaders in Scottsbluff and Gering have known that the Gering landfill was nearing capacity, Now plans to build a new facility in southern Sioux County have all but fallen off the rails.

During Monday’s Scottsbluff Council meeting, City Manager Kevin Spencer explained that Sioux County leaders have extended a moratorium on all landfill projects until April of 2026.

He says that the landowner up there who was willing to sell his property for the project has set a hard deadline of January 2026-meaning the land would have to be bought before getting the greenlight to actually start construction for a new landfill.

“So we’re going to be faced with some difficult decisions in the coming weeks, and I wanted you to know that,” Spencer told the Council. “So we’re we’re talking about maybe looking at some other sites. So we’ll be meet again tomorrow, in the morning we’ll meet with HDR on it. We will have those discussions to. There’s talk about going and meeting with the County Attorney up there just to ask if there’s any chance we can get a conditional use permit. I don’t know how he would answer that. So that might be something we do with HDR.”

The current expiration date for the Gering landfill is November of 2026, and Spencer hinted that Scottsbluff and Gering may have to enter into contract with services like TDS to haul our garbage out of county until a new landfill can be built.