The last municipal landfill in RI closes in three months. What's next in Tiverton?

TIVERTON — With the two-year extension to use its landfill nearly finished, the town is getting ready to start the closing process by the end of November.

Tiverton Landfill, the only municipally owned landfill in the state, was slated to begin the closure and capping process in 2020 before the town requested an extension, citing the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the opening of Bally's Tiverton Casino as its main reasons for the set back.

Now the town has a contractor and expects to start sending its garbage collection trucks to the Central Landfill in Johnston.

Capping the 33-acre landfill with soil will cost a total of about $12.5 million and take about a year and a half to complete, though the town’s landfill closure fund is still about $2 million shy of that figure.

Tiverton has been contributing to this fund since 2014, when it first drafted its landfill closure plan, using proceeds from sales of the authorized trash bags required as a part of the pay-as-you-throw curbside waste collection service.

Will it cost more to use the Central Landfill?

The town plans to continue using the pay-as-you-throw model for curbside collection to chip away at the rest of the money needed to complete the landfill closure process, Town Administrator Christopher Cotta said. Tiverton Public Works Director Rick Rogers estimated about 7,000 households in Tiverton currently utilize the town’s curbside collection service, comprising the majority of residential garbage collection in the town.

Rogers said the town cannot say for certain what the cost difference to send its trash to Johnston will be because the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation, which owns and operates Central Landfill, charges for disposal by the ton.

“We’ve been blessed all these years with our landfill,” Rogers said. “We don’t know exactly how many tons we take in in a year. We estimate it but we don’t know. When you go to Johnston, they have a service there. They weigh everything, every truck that comes in, so they know how much you’re dumping.”

Still, Rogers estimates the overall cost to the town following the transition to Central Landfill will be between $350,000 and $400,000, much lower than the $800,000 it costs to run its garbage disposal program currently.

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The town’s plans to build a new recycling center are still in the design phase as well, Rogers said, but a temporary recycling service will be set up by December. The single-stream recycling Tiverton picks up via its curbside disposal program already goes directly to Johnston, but the landfill currently handles the recycling of hard plastics, metals, mattresses and cardboard, among other things.

The recycling center, to be located in the town’s industrial park between the power plant and Longplex Sports Center, will be designed to handle those materials after the landfill closes. It’s expected to cost about $650,000 and is funded through earnings from taxes on the Bally's Tiverton Casino.

Recycling can be free or costly

As Tiverton moves forward with its landfill closure process, both Town Administrator Christopher Cotta and Rogers advise residents to be conscientious about their recycling habits. Single stream municipal recycling costs nothing for the town to dispose of at the Central Landfill unless it meets the RIRRC’s contamination threshold of 10%.

This means if more than 10% of a recycling load contains unrecyclable materials, the facility will reject the load and charge the town between $600 to $900 per rejected load.

“There was a spell there in late autumn where we had 12 rejected loads in a very short span of time,” Rogers said. “That’s a lot of money.”

Common contaminants are plastic shopping bags, such as those used by grocery stores, plastic wrap, sandwich bags and styrofoam, Rogers said.

Every recycling bin has a list of acceptable materials residents can use as a guide, which can also be found on the town’s website. Additionally, many items not recyclable through curbside pickup, such as plastic shopping bags, can be recycled elsewhere. The RIRRC website has a searchable database residents can use to discern how to properly dispose of certain goods.

In addition to managing recycling contamination, Cotta said another challenge the city will have to face is roadside dumping by residents who can no longer take their garbage directly to the landfill.

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“It’s just the nature of the beast,” Cotta said. “We’re hoping people are receptive to this, we’re getting education out now about what we’re expecting and how we’re going through this, and we’re hoping people maximize their recycling.”

What's next for the Tiverton landfill?

As for the future of the 33-acre Tiverton landfill once it’s completely capped, Cotta said it’s too soon to tell. Due to the nature of the land, it will probably never be made available for development, however Cotta said the town is looking into the possibility of installing a solar panel farm on the property.

“It’s not a project that we’re looking at going after immediately, but it may be something that when this process is over and done with, we would look at the amount of electricity generate here in town and generate a solar field that would offset the cost of that electricity and pay for itself overtime so it’s a net-net for the town,” Cotta said.

This article originally appeared on Newport Daily News: Tiverton Landfill closing in November, affects trash, RI recycling