TEN SLEEP – The Ten Sleep Solid Waste District has met with engineers and contractor Copper Creek Construction, and confirms that the transfer station, slated to replace the landfill in April 2017, will be completed within the next 30 days.

Landfill manager Holly Redland has been trained on the use of the newly-installed drive-over scale at the landfill entrance, and will begin testing the equipment by mid-December. The district still has to finalize the exact minimum charges per weight, and will hold a public meeting to hear feedback early in 2017, according to board member Bart Burningham.

“We’ll be making trial runs across the scale soon with customers, and looking at 20-pound increments rather than [charging] fees per yardage,” said Burningham.

The district is advising that all annual permits purchased in 2016 will be honored for services at the new facility.

Due to prioritization by the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), municipal unlined landfills across Wyoming are facing either mandatory transfer of refuse, or closure. For Ten Sleep, the landfill will effectively be closed in April 2017, and all trash from that point forward will be trailered and transferred, effectively closing the decades-old pit. The landfill will be allowed to take construction materials until the end of December 2017.

A 2009 Integrated Solid Waste Planning report by the DEQ indicates that groundwater contamination caused by unlined landfills have caused operating costs to rise well beyond the budgets of most small local governments in Wyoming. As a result, the DEQ decided to phase out unlined landfills, replacing the system with transfer stations to relocate municipal and private garbage to larger, fee-based landfills.

The Ten Sleep Solid Waste District maintains operating hours of 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday; 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday.

The Solid Waste District will hold their next monthly meeting on Wednesday, Dec. 7 at the Ten Sleep Senior Center. All meetings are open to the public.