Commissioners continue to negotiate on landfill agreement

Perkins County commissioners continue to negotiate with Waste Connections on an agreement for a conditional use permit that would allow them to open a second 80-acre landfill site on the property in northwest Perkins County. 

Waste Connections owns the J Bar J landfill and wants to expand to the west 80 acres on the existing site. 

When the landfill was first sited in Perkins County nearly 30 years ago, the county did not have any zoning in place.

Now that the county does have zoning regulations, a conditional use permit will be required for the expansion. 

At the March 16 regular meeting, commissioners met with J Bar J attorney Randy Fair of Ogallala and operations manager Will McKnight.

One key element of the agreement focuses on a tipping fee to be paid to the county for every ton of material coming into the landfill. 

Originally, the county proposed the fee at $2.50 per ton. Fair indicated that rate was basically a non-starter and expressed a $0.40/ton rate as more acceptable. 

McKnight said they average around 100,000 tons of trash annually which would equate to around $40,000 to Perkins County. 

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