2018 will be the year Larimer County decides what to do with its trash once the county landfill reaches sunset.
The 53-year-old Larimer County Landfill will close by 2025. By that point, Fort Collins leaders hope the city will be in the home stretch of its mission听to send no waste to landfills,听which听will mean nearly doubling the city鈥檚 2016 landfill diversion rate.
Northern Colorado leaders will recommend a path forward in April after years of planning, Fort Collins staff said at a City Council work session Tuesday night.
鈥淲e鈥檙e really at a special point in time,鈥� Fort Collins environmental planner Honore Depew said at the work session. 鈥淭he only publicly owned landfill in Northern Colorado will be closing in a little more than half a decade, and the outcomes of this project will determine how materials are managed throughout the region for decades to come.鈥�
Construction of new facilities should take place between 2020 and 2025. Officials could go with any combination of nearly a dozen options for waste disposal, ranging from a one-stop garbage transfer station to听futuristic facilities听that turn trash into fuel.
What we do with our trash is an important environmental issue because organic waste in landfills produces large amounts of greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane.听The Larimer County Landfill is the third-largest polluter in the county, behind听Rawhide Energy Station听and听Broadcom (formerly Avago Technologies).
A group of staff and officials from Fort Collins, Loveland, Larimer County and Estes Park 鈥� dubbed the听North Front Range Wasteshed Coalition听鈥� will put out a final report this year delving into the pros and cons of nearly a dozen trash options.听The final decision will be up to elected officials, who will figure out how to fund the selected projects next year.
Here are the trash options being considered, sorted by staff in order from most feasible to least feasible. Leaders decided which projects are most doable based on construction and trash hauler costs, time frame and听cost-to-benefit ratio, but they鈥檙e not finished reviewing feasibility yet.
R3 Consulting Group delved into the benefits and drawbacks of each option in a 2016听county-commissioned study.
- Build a central transfer station where the landfill is now.听This would serve as a one-stop drop-off site for garbage, recyclables, organics, and construction and demolition materials. All the materials would then be trucked to different locations for disposal or recovery. A central transfer station would mean more options for residents and haulers but also a big increase in heavy vehicle traffic near the landfill.听
- Build a new landfill.听Larimer County already owns a 640-acre site听near Wellington that would work for a new landfill, but the new location is less centrally located than the current landfill. That means there鈥檚 no guarantee haulers would decide to take trash there.
- Build a composting facility听for yard waste.听
- Build a composting facility for food waste.
- Build a processing facility for construction and demolition materials, many of which end up in the landfill right now because the region doesn鈥檛 have a processing facility for them.
- Build a 鈥渃lean鈥� materials recovery facility, which uses human labor and machinery to sort recyclables. Clean materials recovery facilities accept only recyclable materials.听
- Build a food waste pre-processing facility for anaerobic digestion. Food waste would be processed here and then sent to an anaerobic digester to make biogas through a chain of biological processes.听
- Build a听direct combustion waste-to-energy facility that burns trash and uses the latent heat to generate energy.听
- Build a refuse-derived fuel waste-to-energy facility that turns trash into a homogeneous product that can be used to generate energy.听
- Build a 鈥渄irty鈥� materials recovery facility, which accepts both recyclables and non-recyclables but has a lower diversion rate than facilities that only take recyclables.
- Do nothing. The county would avoid the cost of building new infrastructure, but haulers鈥� costs would increase because they鈥檇 have to carry trash farther to other landfills. Those additional costs would probably result in heftier hauling fees for residents, and all the additional driving would mean more greenhouse gas emissions.
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