news
Trash to
Treasure
LANE COUNTY GOVERNMENT
IS REVIVING TALKS TO MAKE
RECYCLING MORE EFFICIENT
AND CONVERT METHANE FROM
THE LANDFILL
By Henry Houston
L
ane County’s waste could be its treasure.
All it needs is the right facility at Short
Mountain Landfill, near Goshen.
The landfill, which is the repository for
everything from food waste to materials
from the county’s several transfer stations,
is one of the county’s largest sources of
greenhouse gas emissions, according to the second
phase of the county’s Climate Action Plan, released in
November 2021.
To address emissions at Short Mountain, the county
is exploring a facility on the site that can keep recycling
and other materials from heading to the landfill and
contributing to the dump’s carbon footprint. Another
part of that plan is to include an anaerobic facility at
Short Mountain that can convert methane at the land-
fill into natural gas.
These are expensive propositions, and Lane County
is still in early phases of exploring such facilities. An
anaerobic digestion facility has seen success in Califor-
nia’s Monterey County, however, converting methane
into natural gas — referred to as “renewable natural gas”
— leads to questions about how it’s used and whether it
should be used by residential communities.
Throughout Lane County, a lot of recyclable materi-
als and food waste are placed in garbage bins, says Dan
Hurley, Lane County’s director of Public Works. Those
recyclable materials don’t make it to Portland, where Lane
County’s recyclable materials are taken, so they end up
at the Short Mountain Landfill, he says.
That then emits greenhouse gases. “The landfill is the
largest emitter of greenhouse gas from county operations,
and it’s the second-largest stationary source in the whole
country, second behind International Paper,” he adds.
Hurley says a material recovery facility could locate
recyclable materials among the waste that ends up at the
landfill. The facility could expand recycling capabilities
and result in spinoff industries, he says.
According to materials from a Dec. 7 Lane County Board
of County Commissioners meeting that explored ways to cut
down on Short Mountain’s greenhouse gas emissions, the
county reported that in 2019 it had a 55.1 percent recovery
rate of recyclables, the highest in the state. The county is
now aiming for a 63 percent recycling rate.
The county is currently requesting bids from manu-
facturers, but the costs of such a recovery facility could
range from $15 million to $40 million. Funding for upgrad-
ing the county’s landfill processing could come from the
recently passed Modernizing Recycling Act, which puts
a fee on producers, Hurley says.
Lane County is also exploring the anaerobic digestion
facility, which converts methane into natural gas provid-
ing energy for buildings, homes or transportation.
Methane recovery isn’t new for Lane County. It’s been
doing methane recovery since 1991 with Emerald People’s
Utility District, Hurley says. In that agreement, the landfill
has been collecting landfill gas, which is about half meth-
ane, to power a landfill gas-to-energy facility.
Around 2010, Lane County was in the process of devel-
oping a Renewable Energy Park that included a 2-megawatt
solar array, an anaerobic digester, upgrades to EPUD’s
combustion engines and facilities to utilize waste heat
from landfill gas combustion, Hurley says. The county
didn’t get the program off its feet due to finances. But
Lane County is still interested in developing some of
those projects, he says.
An anaerobic digestion facility would collect more
methane than the current facilities at the landfill, accord-
ing to the county’s Climate Action Plan. That methane
could be converted to a fuel source that can be used for
transportation- or heat-related purposes, the plan says.
There has been a biogas plant powered by food waste in
Lane County. In 2013, the private company JC-Biomethane
opened a plant that accepted waste from households and
restaurants, but in 2016 it ran into trouble with paying its
property taxes, according to a 2016 Eugene Weekly inves-
tigation. In 2018, the multinational petroleum company
Shell purchased the plant.
An anaerobic plant at Short Mountain could remove
400,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2040, the
county’s Climate Action Plan says. According to an EPA
calculator, removing that much carbon dioxide is equiv-
alent to taking about 86,000 passenger vehicles off the
road for a year.
But Laura Feinstein, a fellow at the Seattle-based envi-
ronmental think tank Sightline Institute, says she has
some reservations about methane-converted natural
gas, sometimes referred to as renewable gas. One of the
problems, she says, is that there’s no such thing as renew-
able natural gas; it burns the same way as natural gas.
Natural gas companies are trying to use methane-
converted natural gas as a way to keep the fossil fuels
industry alive for a few more years, she says. There isn’t
enough methane in landfills to turn that into a viable fuel
source, she adds, so she cautions against sending it to resi-
dential users for cooking or heating. There are greener
energy sources in Oregon, so “we shouldn’t be off in this
boondoggle on how to get landfill gas into our kitchen.”
The Monterey Regional Waste Management District
(MRWMD) in California was the second organization in the
U.S. to try an anaerobic digestion facility, says its general
manager, Tim Flanagan. MRWMD serves a population
similar to Lane County.
The agency’s anaerobic facility was a part of a pilot
program that ran 2013 to 2019, and it used the natural gas
to power the sewage plant next door. Building a permanent
anaerobic digestion facility for MRWMD will take years,
he says. The agency is planning construction by 2025.
MRWMD also has a materials recovery facility and
worked with the Eugene-based waste system designer
Bulk Handling Systems to build it, Flanagan says. The
facility sorts through raw garbage, separating waste from
recyclables, like paper and plastic, he says.
Lane County is considering working with BHS, but
Hurley says the county will talk with other companies to
do its due diligence.
Hurley says it’s too early in planning to disregard certain
negotiations, such as selling the natural gas to NW Natural.
If the county sold it to NW Natural, that could help bring
the company on board to help pay for the multi-million
dollar project, he says.
The county is still in early stages of developing this
facility, so it hasn’t spoken with NW Natural about this.
There are other options for natural gas, too, Hurley
says. The county could use the landfill-converted natural
gas for LTD buses or garbage trucks.
These multi-million dollar facilities can’t replace indi-
vidual behavior, he says. A facility that can extract methane
from food waste isn’t better for the environment than a
resident who composts their food at home, for example.
“That’s the easiest and best use of organics,” Hurley
adds. “But not everybody can do backyard compost.” ■
Obituaries for the Homeless
PLEASE HELP EW HONOR THE LIVES OF THOSE WHO HAVE DIED
By EW Staff
A
s the new year kicks off with ice and snow and torrential
rain, the homeless people of Lane County struggle for
shelter and survival. In addition to our news cover-
age of this life and death issue, the writers of Eugene
Weekly will continue our project of chronicling the
lives of the unhoused people who die in Lane County.
Below is a list, courtesy of Black Thistle Street
Aid, of the people known to have died in 2021. EW was only able to
write obituaries for the first 13 people, whose names are in bold type.
If you have contact information for friends and family who might
want to talk for an obituary for other people on the list, or informa-
tion on people who died but are not listed or, sadly, people who die in
2022, please email Editor@EugeneWeekly.com or call 541-484-0519.
E U G E N E W E E K LY . C O M
1. Ivory McCuen
2. Kristi Schmidt
3. Hazel Dai
4. Douglas James Hanson
5. Kim Repp
6. Eugene Winters
7. Davie Scott Hanes
8. Lisa Ann Fowler
9. Deborah “Debbie” Plum
10. Chuck Rintalin
11. Rodney Heckathorn.
12. Sarah Fallingwater
13. Shandee Franke
14. Jimmy Clark
15. Anthony Pietrafitta
16. Kermit
17. Tucker
18. JJ
19. Lane Davis
20. Robert “Montana” Lepper
21. Grant
22. Irish Paul
23. Marcos
24. Ron
25. Mark Corbitt
26. Jack Edwin Hill
27. Jeremy D.
28. Kelsey Hope
29. Michael
30. Leslie Shoemaker
31. Tamara Hickling
32. Cindy Chance
33. Shawn Martin
34. Jimbo
35.Thomas Perkalis
36. Sam
37. Scott
38. Unknown man, who died of
exposure at a bus stop on Hwy 99
J A N U A R Y
1 3 ,
2 0 2 2
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