Aww, the Coffin Butte Landfill — you know, the giant trash mountain north of town that cravenly swallows something like a third of all of Oregon’s garbage — turns out their management are the quiet hide-y-stuff types.
Back in May, Benton County’s waste coordinator sent 13 questions. Pretty basic stuff, like, where does your leachate go, how often does your landfill catch fire, how much room do you actually have left before it’s full. The kind of questions you’d think a company managing acres of buried (and not so buried) trash next to people’s homes would just, you know, answer.
It mostly didn’t.
This comes at a spicy moment for Coffin Butte. Earlier this year Benton County’s commissioners presto-change-o rescinded their approval of company’s expansion plans, because, well, this: The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality slapped the landfill with a $3 million fine — the biggest in DEQ history — for 10 separate air quality violations just days after the approval.
Phoenix-based Republic Services, which owns the aforementioned mountain of trash, is appealing both the fine and the expansion denial, because of course it is.
Also, the company has a franchise agreement with the county, which is why the county was asking questions. Okay, that wasn’t the only reason. There was that DEQ fine and the gas leaks.
Wait, gas leaks
So, Oregon’s DEQ was like, hey, your gas collection system at Coffin Butte isn’t big enough to do its job right, and it too often runs without a flare lit, meaning landfill gas just… escapes, uncombusted, into the air above your neighborhood. DEQ also found the company wasn’t monitoring for methane leaks like it’s supposed to, wasn’t fixing the leaks it did find fast enough, and wasn’t keeping tabs on tears in the landfill’s surface cover.
When we went to Republic’s homepage its FIRST headline read, “Sustainable solutions to create a cleaner, safer and healthier world.” Okay, stop laughing, you have to keep reading now.
The county asked, The landfill mostly said no
Every year, per its franchise agreement with Benton County, Coffin Butte has to file an annual report. This year’s version, covering 2024, got a freshening the company described as “redesigned for readability and simplicity.” Sure. After going through it, the county’s solid waste coordinator, Bailey Payne, sent that aforementioned May 13 letter pointing out apparent errors, asking for info that used to just be in these reports as a matter of course, and tacking on some new questions about current concerns. He asked for answers by June 15.
The county actually sat on the company’s response for a bit — officials said they wanted commissioners to see it first — and only released it July 9, after the Statesman Journal filed a public records request.
Bret Davis, the landfill’s general manager, wrote back on June 8 and basically told the county to pump the brakes. A lot of what’s being asked, he argued, goes beyond what the franchise agreement actually requires. “Over the years, the annual report has significantly expanded in scope beyond the environmental conditions of the landfill and beyond any agreement by the parties on other issues,” he wrote, adding that the landfill’s been fielding “continuous requests for additional information, sometimes sporadically, and with no meaningful discussion or input from Coffin Butte Landfill.”
Cool story bro. Let’s go question by question.
Garbage juice, just drink it, trust us
Leachate — the liquid that seeps through a pile of trash the size of a landfill, so, everything you’d expect that to contain — used to go to wastewater treatment plants in Salem and Corvallis. Corvallis stopped taking it at the end of 2025. Republic says it’s now going to a private treatment plant. Which one? Not telling. How much? Also not telling. The county asked for 2024 gallon totals to both cities too. Nope — the company says none of it is relevant to the landfill’s “environmental condition,” which is a stance you’re welcome to have an opinion about. We at The Advocate have been instructed that we can’t have opinions because were lowly journalists — but moving right along.
Fires, nope, nothing to see here
The county wanted to know about the frequency of fires at the dump; causes, staff response, how often Corvallis Fire has had to roll out — and pointed out that Short Mountain Landfill in Eugene, which takes in roughly a quarter of what Coffin Butte does, logged 60 battery-sparked fires last year. Coffin Butte declined to hand over numbers, saying fire data isn’t part of the 2024 annual report. It did offer this: “We do not experience a similar frequency of incidents as reported by the Lane County facility,” while also saying it’s happy to sit down and talk about battery-related fire risk. Great — so which is it, no data or please let’s discuss?
How much room is actually left
This is the one that should raise eyebrows. The landfill’s own report says both 10 years and 12.9 years of capacity remain — on the same page. It also shows measured airspace jumping by more than 584,000 cubic yards between 2023 and 2024, with zero explanation. The county wanted to know if that jump had anything to do with a new cell opening, and whether the aerial lidar surveys used to measure buried waste have kept happening since 2021. Company’s answer: didn’t explain the contradiction, wouldn’t confirm the cell connection, and on the lidar surveys, said that request wasn’t “already agreed upon” beforehand. As for the capacity mystery, here’s the explanation we did get, “The additional capacity is a result of both continual evaluations of the design lan and tonnage changes.” Make of that what you will.
About that tonnage
Republic’s report claims Coffin Butte took in 1,032,214 tons of trash in 2024 — the exact same number as 2023, down to the ton. When the county flagged that as suspicious, the company corrected it to 1,042,113 tons and called it a typo. As a county requested breakdown of private versus commercial waste and vehicle counts, information the county used to just get every year, Republic says that’s now “non-public and competitively sensitive.”
Everything else: also no
- Hazardous waste and recycling events — the county asked about numbers for customers, locations, and tonnage diverted for these events. The company declined to answer because technically those events belong to Corvallis Disposal Co., a separate Republic Services company.
- Environmental trust fund — the county wanted historical balances. Got the Dec. 31, 2024 number ($19 million) and nothing else.
- Composting facility — Republic also runs the Pacific Region Compost site, the biggest composting operation in the state, right next door to the dump. A 10-year materials chart used to be standard in these reports. Not anymore — Republic says PRC is a separate entity not bound by the franchise agreement, even though “the two facilities partner.”
- Recycling numbers — answers for how much material Coffin Butte actually recovers or recycles, its state-required Material Recovery Survey, tonnage from its recycling depots — all declined, on the grounds that it’s either outside the scope of the annual report or not something the landfill technically operates itself.
So that’s where things stand: a landfill facing a record state fine for sullying the environment locally and otherwise that’s unwilling to answer questions they used to answer.
By Mike Suarez
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