Town considers transfer station location alternative

The Town of Thermopolis Landfill is at the end of its life cycle and for many years town officials have been trying to plan for the transition to a transfer station.

Previous town administration planned to have a transfer station located on land just north of Thermopolis and had explored the idea of privatizing garbage collection.

Thermopolis Mayor Adam Estenson gave his current perspective on how the town is planning to handle its trash and the preparations for a transfer station. Recently, the town council accepted a bid to purchase a new trash truck. This action sparked a new interest in learning what direction the town is now taking.

Mayor Estenson said, “First and foremost, I want to keep the town in control of our sanitation haul, which is primarily the driver here. Someday the landfill will close and that is coming very soon. We have to cease operations as a sanitary landfill. It’ll still be open for construction and demolition material.”

The state and the federal EPA through the DEQ have mandated that the town’s landfill is at the end of its life cycle. The cost to permit and line and continue to operate additional cells within the landfill is extremely cost-prohibitive, according to the Mayor. “And it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for the amount of time you get per cell.”

With the coming closing of the landfill, the state has stepped in to provide funds to build a transfer station. 

Mayor Estenson said, “That’s been an ongoing process for, I think, 15 years, kind of identifying where they want to go with that. There have been a couple of attempts to kind of get it done. There’s no criticism of the previous administrations for that, but it just never came together.”

Estenson continued, “We’re identifying ideal sites for a transfer station and they really are going to work best for a lot of reasons. We’re working through that process. A big part of that was, well, if we’re going to stay in the trash business. I think previous administrations had entertained the mindset that if you build the transfer station, then you would have a private company come in and haul everyone’s trash.”

Mayor Estenson had concerns about having a private contractor handle the town’s trash. He explained, “We, as a municipality, would have a franchise agreement with them that they can come in and provide service to our citizens. The problem is now, you’re at the whim of whoever you’ve hired to come in and haul that trash off. Then you most likely don’t have dumpsters anymore. Everyone has the roll-away cans.”

If the town hired a private contractor, the mayor had additional concerns about the contractor being bought up by some other larger company. He added, “The town then loses more control, and costs increase as well.”

According to the mayor, the transfer station doesn’t serve only town residents. He said, “The transfer station remains an option for county residents and actually come to the transfer station to drop their day-to-day rubbish. I don’t think those little rolly cans are good for a lot of people in our community. I think the dumpsters are a much better option.”

Regarding the recent purchase of a new trash truck, the mayor said, “The reason why we decided to get a trash truck is that ours are aging and it was a mentality of waiting until they age because we’re probably going to be bringing in a private carrier, anyway. We’re moving away from the idea of bringing in a private carrier. I think there was a mentality that we’re going to bring in private carriers so there’s no sense in buying a new trash truck so we’ll just keep what we have as long as we can, and kind of limp along till we get someone hired to come in here and haul the trash. I want to be in the business ourselves.”

The town’s permit for operating the landfill ends on July 1, 2025. However, July 1, 2024, is the initial cease and transfer submittal date to be met. All these dates stand until the DEQ approves a potential site for those dates to change. The DEQ can add time or adjust the closure of the landfill once the town plans are established enough to show the town is ready to move forward with the transfer station.

As part of the application, Mayor Estenson said they have a variety of details to define. He said that they plan to announce the transfer station location by the end of April.

The mayor also seeks to ease the concerns of the public about the transfer station. He said, “The big thing I want to share with people is what a transfer station actually is because I think that has been heartburn for people. This is going to be closer to town and people are going to see it. The transfer station is just a building.”

“It’s a building where trash trucks collect in town or when residents come and dump in a big open warehouse, they come in and dump their trash. That trash goes from that floor to a drop floor, so they’ll push it over an edge. Down below that is a trailer, and once that trailer is full, then you take it to a landfill, like Cody, Worland, Casper, or wherever we end up.”

The mayor continued and said, “Some people envision that a transfer station is like, essentially you take a landfill and put it inside a building—which it is not. Esthetically, there’s not going to be any trash blowing around. Everything will be enclosed within the building. Operationally, you’ll have a semi-truck leaving every couple of days. And people are concerned there’ll be a smell associated with it. And if you’re operating your transfer station correctly, you won’t have a smell because you’re hauling the trash before that time to create a smell. So it’s very manageable.”

Mayor Estenson added that other municipalities have already successfully operated a transfer station. He said, “A prime example of this is the town of Powell. Their transfer station is pretty much right in their downtown area. It’s right within the town’s limits and they don’t have any issue with that.”

Regarding fees and how much they are, that is still to be determined. Mayor Estenson explained, “My big thing is I would love to have a scale because right now, we’ve never known how much trash we’re hauling on a daily basis. So it’s really hard to make any sort of decision without that information. And so for me, part of the process here is I want to start to weigh our trash so we know what we’re dealing with right now. There is no baseline metric to say this is what we do.”

He added, “The general message is that a transfer station is the direction that we’re moving in, and transfer stations aren’t as scary as people think they are. They can be run really well. I want to keep the dumpsters and I want the town to maintain control of hauling the trash.”