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CLARKSTON, Cache County — About 5 miles outside of Clarkston, a town of almost 700 inhabitants just south of the Idaho border, the North Valley Landfill is slowly amassing the waste of the entire Cache County, at 350 tons per day. But, in an area known for its high winds, plastics from the dump site have been blowing across the open landscape, littering large portions of farmers' fields, and traveling as far as Weston in Idaho.
Winds started picking up Friday, and did not abate until late Sunday, spreading even more plastic across the fields of northern Utah and into Idaho, which is spitting distance from the site's property line.
The city of Logan, which manages the landfill, responded to the trash storm Monday, sending a group of temporary employees to collect the bags, film and other debris. But the task is challenging once the spread takes to the wind.
"People don't realize what we're fighting against," said Logan operations manager Tyler Richards. The trash takes to the air "every time the wind blows," he said, "and that's not just my landfill, that's every landfill."
"The garbage is blowing now," Clair Christiansen observed Wednesday, watching the plastic free itself from mounds at the landfill near his plot. The farmer is not willing to till the plastic in his field into the ground; and if he were to, the trash would work its way through the moving parts of his tractor, possibly damaging electronic sensors.
"I can't get out of the tractor every 5 minutes to clear it," he said, adding that the problem is more impactful now, during the planting season. When it's time to harvest, Christiansen's combine has the same issues.
The farmer said Logan officials have been communicative, and the site managers have worked to remediate the problem, but the issue continues to repeat itself. The city transitioned from a landfill just west of the city to the North Valley Landfill in about 2017, building a transfer station that hauls all the county waste out to the more remote 120-acre site.
The residents of nearby Clarkston knew the wind was an issue when the landfill was proposed. In 2011, Melissa Heiner told KSL, "We always have a wind coming through here in Clarkston, and it's going to blow trash everywhere."
In the winter, city workers are not able to collect the litter, for fear of destroying the muddy and snow-laden fields, so they put a large effort into getting ahead of collection before farmers start tilling their land in the spring.
In 2020, the issue first came to a head, according to Doug Tanner, regional remediation manager for the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality. Wind-blown trash had been carried far into Franklin County, Idaho, and residents began submitting complaints to Tanner's office. The division sent a crew out to inspect the disaster, and then sent a letter to the manager of the landfill, obtained through a public records request by KSL.com.
"Waste from the (North Valley Landfill) was observed in fields in Idaho as far away as 1.75 miles north of the landfill," it reads, "comprised primarily of plastic grocery bags, plastic garbage bags, plastic containers, plastic packaging and wrapping, cardboard, paper wrappings, paper sheets, etc."
The Idaho DEQ estimated six tons of garbage had been blown off the dump, and cleanup "may be an impossible task, given the sheer size and extent of the waste field," despite the best efforts of Logan city.
In comparison to 2020, Richards said the current situation is "not even close." Tanner said the Idaho DEQ has not received complaints about the most recent wind event.
And, by all accounts, Logan has made serious efforts to mitigate the problem.
Emily Malik, conservation coordinator for the city of Logan, said it immediately began limiting activity and covering the mounds during high wind conditions. Six inches of fill dirt is placed on the mounds when closing. They installed several wind fences, both stationary and movable. They hired a full-time inspector tasked with managing errant litter and hired seasonal community service personnel to collect stray trash from the countryside. A large vacuum skid was purchased and is set to arrive next week.
Even small wind events will cause plastic film and bags to escape the wind measures at both transfer station and landfill.
–Emily Malik, Logan city spokeswoman
The challenge of "multidirectional high-velocity winds," as the DEQ describes it, is a continuous one. Malik said, in a release, that "even small wind events will cause plastic film and bags to escape the wind measures at both transfer station and landfill." To make matters worse, the permanent windscreen collected so much trash it turned into a large sail, and broke ... multiple times.
Solving the problem is a high-priority endeavor. The Idaho DEQ outlined the serious impacts on neighboring farmers and the environment. "This waste may be harmful to farm equipment," they said in a letter to Logan, adding, "This material can damage the equipment causing costly repairs."
They say the waste can kill wildlife and pollute the streams, creeks and rivers flowing nearby. It "may become breeding grounds for populations of insects and rodents," they wrote, also worried fire risk could be a concern later in the year "when weather conditions become hotter and dryer."
Landfill manager Richards said they will "continue to put in effort at the tail end," but the real solution to the problem is not an easy one — the county must find ways to reduce plastic use at the source. The employees who have been working at the landfill for decades tell Richards they've seen the level of plastic "dramatically increase" over the last 10 years. There is no real market for plastics labeled No. 3 through No. 7, and the thin film from packaged goods is especially difficult to manage.
All efforts to curb plastic use in the county have "gone nowhere," according to Richards. "People are not willing to pay for an inconvenience."
For now, Logan is suggesting residents of Cache County weigh down their plastic bags, and put packing material inside trash so it won't blow away.
