Republic Services will not be taking no for an answer. Earlier this week, they rode their white-steed Landfill Trash Monster over to Oregon’s Land Use Board of Appeals, claiming our silly little county was wrong-wrong-wrong to deny their proposed landfill expansion. Unintended allusion to creepy corporate paternalism intended, and moving right along.
This would be, of course, the same Republic landfill facility just hit with $3 million in DEQ fines for environmental violations, the largest such penalty in the state’s history. And here, one must credit Republic’s brazenness. They accomplished that feat while using only 178 acres for waste disposal. Their proposal is to INCREASE capacity another almost 40% to 248 acres.
The whole site is 740 acres, some being set aside for preservation and wetlands, for now, while the political will still remains.
Speaking of permits, a funny story. The Benton County Board of Commissioners at one point approved the expansion SUBJECT TO several conditions. And then. THEN, two days after that approval, the state issued the aforementioned environmental enforcement notice.
So, between that revelation and an appeal by a grassroots citizens’ group, Valley Neighbors for Environmental Quality and Safety, or VNEQS, pronounced vee-necks, the County Commissioners reopened the matter. They took in new evidence and testimony. They ultimately reversed their approval, unanimously.
Unfunny fact. Republic may be able to offset some or most of their environmental fines by purchasing the equipment they should have purchased in the first place so they would have been compliant with the law.
For their part, the Commissioners do not seem to be surprised by the appeal.
“Regardless of how the Board voted I always believed that our decision would be appealed to LUBA. I believe now the same thing I believed when the original decision was appealed to LUBA last year: LUBA will make a fair ruling based on the Board’s decision and alignment to our own county code,” said commissioner Gabe Shepherd.
“Benton County was notified Tuesday night of the appeal filed by counsel representing Valley Landfills [Republic Services]. We are ready to provide all documents requested by LUBA. We will continue to work with a land use attorney, as we have since the beginning of the Conditional Use Permit process, to give us expert guidance throughout the appeal process,” said commissioner Pat Malone. “While this is happening, the Board of Commissioners will continue with plans for conversations about reporting and addressing environmental violations. We’ll invite representatives from EPA and Oregon DEQ to come before the Board in coming months to discuss how long it took for the pre-enforcement notice and the enforcement order — official documentation of dangerous violations — to be released to Benton County, and how we might avoid that lag in the future.”
Commissioner Nancy Wyse was direct, saying, “I stand by the decision made by the Board of Commissioners, it was based upon all the evidence in the record, including the new evidence of the DEQ report, and exhaustive public testimony.”
Referencing both the appeal and earlier statements by Wyse, John Wilson, an Adair Village City Councilor seeking to unseat Malone said, “I’m not surprised by the filing of the notice of intent to appeal the Board of Commissioners’ decision to deny LU-24-027 but in the words of Commissioner Wyse, “the landfill has not been, in any way, a good neighbor..” as such, Valley Landfills [Republic Services] remains consistent about their bottom line and disinterested in the health and safety of the residents of Benton County.”
We also reached out to some of the folks from the Valley Neighbors for Environmental Quality and Safety group.
“I wasn’t at all surprised that Republic plans to appeal to LUBA. They have buckets of money to spend, whether on lawyers, lobbyists, consultants, or public influence campaigns. Too bad they’re not willing to spend more of that money on cleaning up their act,” said Joel Geier. “For them to keep pushing this scheme, after five years of hearing “No!” from the people of Benton County, just shows that they have no respect for our community.”
Debbie Palmer said, “This is just another example of Republic Services’ predatory delay tactics; they continue to suck up everyone’s time ad nauseam – the County’s, the community’s… we’d all love to be doing something else, that’s for sure. But no, we have to keep fighting these guys. When will Republic get it that No means NO? And stop trying to expand this landfill that was never properly sited to begin with? An accident of WWII that once upon a time was gonna be closed by the year 2000?”
“We anticipated that Republic would likely file an appeal. Republic has already invested millions of dollars in infrastructure onsite convinced they had the expansion approval in the bag. And this is a goose that is laying golden eggs for Republic – they are making 10s of millions of dollars in profit every year, likely $60million plus. They are highly motivated to expand this dump and increase the poisoning of the air and water in our County,” said Mark Yeager. “I anticipate that VNEQS will participate in the LUBA proceedings but we have not filed a motion to intervene yet.”
As to Republic. Well, their notice to the Land Use Board of Appeals says they intend to appeal, they have yet to say on what grounds.
And, as to this newspaper’s opinion, you may have already guessed. In case you missed our March 9, 2026 editorial on the matter, well, here yuh go.
Editorial: Time to Run Republic Services out of Town, Let us Explain Why
County officials nixed expanding the Coffin Butte Landfill last week. But we think that should just be a start. The dump’s owner, Republic Services, has been a terrible corporate citizen, and we believe it’s past time to boot them the hell out of our fair little burgh.
At the very least, Benton County and the City of Corvallis should put its trash hauling franchise agreements out for competitive bidding. And even more to the point, Benton County needs to examine the possibility of eminent domain proceedings to take over the landfill; the goal being to close it and clean it up.
These moves would offer several advantages for the community.
Foremost, Republic is ostensibly on the hook for any post closure site remediation, eminent domain or not. But a condemnation proceeding would almost certainly put state and local government in charge of performing and evaluating that cleanup. And we think that’s a good idea. After all, government is at least somewhat accountable to the electorate, Republic it appears, not so much.
Outside the landfill, we think competitive bids for our area’s trash collection franchises could mean lower consumer rates, improved services, and potentially more environmental and public health oversight. There is every reason to explore this option. We’d like our public officials to vigorously pursue multiple bids. We’d also like to see them thoroughly investigate the possibility of offering a publicly owned trash collection service. And in either alternative, it may be beneficial to investigate opportunities to partner with other municipalities regionally.
Of course, this will all take time and there will be challenges. But even Republic admits the Coffin Butte Landfill has another twelve years of capacity, which is a workable timeframe.
And let’s talk about Republic and time. Twice, the Planning Commission rejected the company’s expansion proposals after rigorous review. Twice, Benton County’s Board of Commissioners did the same, ultimately rejecting Republic’s proposal after learning both the company and DEQ had not told the whole truth about what’s been happening environmentally at the dump. And at every one of those turns, County staff put in tremendous hours assessing Republic’s proposals.
Of course, the company pays only a portion of all that review, we taxpayers on the hook for the rest. But it’s more than just financial resources. The company has been looking to wear this community down since 2021. They have pitted community members against one another. They have fomented bitterness.
All that time and energy that Republic has sucked could have been better used. Housing and homelessness issues have deepened, local health care is imploding, and there are overdue infrastructure discussions to be had.
Republic Services has been a demonstrably negative force in our shared community. From their environmental record to their disregard for human health, we should not be surprised by their unwillingness to take our community’s no for an answer. Even now, they will not commit to forgoing further appeals.
They have shown our shared community who they are. It is time that we help them leave.
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