Unless expanded, the permanent landfill portion of the Ohio Gulch waste management site that accepts Blaine County's construction and demolition waste will be full within two to three years, officials have reported.
Because of this, county officials are in the process of negotiating with officials from the Twin Falls District of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to have federal lands immediately to the east of the existing site transferred into county ownership.
But before that can happen, an environmental assessment considering the potential environmental impacts of such a land transfer will have to be completed, said Terry Schultz, director of Southern Idaho Solid Waste, which includes seven southern Idaho counties.
Schultz said the county has hired a consultant to complete the assessment, which "is one of the primary touchstones to purchasing the property."
Should the land transfer eventually be given the OK to proceed, the county would have to purchase the land from the federal land management agency based on an appraisal of the property, he said. The original application by the county requests a 120-acre land transfer, he said.
"Ultimately, I would expect it to be 80 to 120 acres," Schultz said.
He said the two- to three-year estimate for the lifespan of the existing facility is based on the 11,000 to 12,000 tons of construction and demolition waste that is brought to the site annually. He said waste that is buried on site must meet a number of specific standards.
This includes requirements that the materials not be capable of rotting and then sending contaminants into the groundwater, or be capable of blowing away. Materials that can be buried on site include concrete and other non-toxic construction rubble, some types of metals and landscaping materials small enough to be ground up into wood mulch.
"We're allowed to keep it on site because it's inert," Schultz explained.
Sometime next spring, findings from the completed environmental analysis will be presented to BLM officials to consider. He said the final say on whether the land transfer should proceed will be up to officials with the federal agency.
Most of the land that remains at the county-operated Ohio Gulch site—located east of state Highway 75 between Hailey and Ketchum—is on steep hillsides, which limits expansion opportunities, Schultz said.
"When you go up vertically, you lose area, square footage," he said.
Locally, not everyone believes that expanding the Ohio Gulch site is the best and only way to address Blaine County's construction and demolition waste issue.
Craig Barry, executive director of the Environmental Resource Center in Ketchum, thinks local officials should instead be looking at ways of limiting the amount of waste that enters the landfill. Doing so would require them to reconsider the community's approach to dealing with the waste, Barry said.
"As a community, how do we want to treat this waste?" he asked.
In strongly worded comments, Barry faulted not just one but a progression of decision-makers for the situation the county now finds itself in.
"Two to three years is a pretty short timeline," he said. "What has the county done to avert this train wreck?"
Barry said that he doubts the general public is aware of the policy that allows significant amounts of construction and demolition waste to enter into the local landfill. If they did, they would likely push local officials to come up with a better way of separating out those portions that can be recycled, reused and not placed in the landfill.
"The policy is de facto that we're going to buy more land," Barry said.
For his part, Schultz said that viewing the topic as just a recycle-or-bury issue is a vast oversimplification.
He said officials have tried a number of ways to convince local builders to reduce the amount of construction materials they dump in the landfill. This has included a differential fee structure meant to incentivize builders into separating contaminated materials from those that can be buried on site at Ohio Gulch, he said.
But, for a variety of reasons, including the fast-paced dynamic of Blaine County's construction industry, many builders have not bought into the separating message, Schultz said.
"We don't see that sort of building dynamic anywhere in the region," he said.
For now, mixed waste that includes contaminated material is trucked out of Blaine County south to the Milner Butte landfill near Burley.
"They're so co-mingled that they have to be hauled away," Schultz said.
He said that if builders started separating more of their construction and demolition waste, the amount remaining at the Ohio Gulch site would actually increase.
"It would put more pressure on the inert disposal at Ohio Gulch," Schultz said.
The burying of local construction and demolition waste is just one of the various waste management activities that go on at Ohio Gulch. It also serves as a waste transfer station and a recycling hub.
The portion of the Ohio Gulch waste management site that accepts construction and demolition waste for permanent burial, above, will be full within two to three years, officials report. Because of this, Blaine County officials are discussing a possible land transfer with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to increase the size of the site. Photo by Willy Cook
