The Riverbend Landfill, owned by Waste Management Inc. and located 2.5 miles southwest of McMinnville along the South Yamhill River, should never be expanded onto the exclusive farm use land that surrounds it. This is not an extreme position. It is a position grounded in Oregon law, environmental science, economic common sense, and the expressed wishes of the Yamhill County community.
Following the Yamhill County Board of Commissioners' decision to override the planning commission's unanimous 7-0 denial and approve Waste Management's expansion application, Waste Not of Yamhill County has appealed that decision to the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals. But win or lose in any particular legal proceeding, our fundamental position remains the same: this expansion is wrong, and Yamhill County deserves better.
The Case Against Expansion
The case against expanding the Riverbend Landfill is not built on sentiment or general opposition to waste management infrastructure. It is built on specific, well-documented concerns about this particular site, this particular proposal, and the choices it would foreclose for Yamhill County's future.
At its core, the expansion would convert irreplaceable agricultural land to industrial waste disposal — permanently. It would do so in a region where agricultural land is legally protected, economically valuable, and culturally significant. And it would do so without the county first demonstrating that available alternatives have been pursued to their fullest extent. We believe those three facts, taken together, make the expansion unjustifiable.
Agricultural Irreversibility
Oregon's land use planning system protects exclusive farm use land for a reason: the state has a profound interest in preserving its agricultural heritage, productive soils, and farming communities. The Willamette Valley, including Yamhill County, contains some of the most productive agricultural soils in the Pacific Northwest — soils that took thousands of years to develop and that, once covered by landfill infrastructure, are effectively gone from agricultural production forever.
"Reclamation" of former landfill sites is a concept that exists in planning documents but rarely in practice. The physical, chemical, and regulatory legacy of a landfill makes genuine agricultural restoration extraordinarily difficult and expensive. Once Waste Management's equipment crosses onto the adjacent farmland, that land is gone from agriculture for practical purposes. We do not take that kind of permanent decision lightly, and we do not believe the county should either.
The proposed expansion acres are not marginal farmland. They represent the agricultural qualities — soil depth, water retention, proximity to irrigation sources — that have made this region valuable to farmers for generations. Treating them as expendable misunderstands both their economic and ecological significance.
Threats to Water Resources
The South Yamhill River is the defining water resource of this part of the county. Farms downstream depend on it for irrigation. Fish populations depend on it for habitat. Recreational users depend on it for quality of life. Any expansion of the Riverbend Landfill increases the risk that industrial waste disposal will contaminate this shared resource.
Landfills generate leachate — toxic liquid that percolates through decomposing waste and accumulates at the bottom of the landfill. Modern lined landfills include leachate collection systems, but those systems are not fail-proof, and they are designed to work for decades — not centuries. As the landfill ages and its liner system degrades, the long-term risk of groundwater contamination increases. The closer the landfill sits to the river, the higher the risk that contamination will reach the surface water.
The Riverbend Landfill already sits near the South Yamhill River. Expanding it brings more waste, more leachate, more liner system, and more long-term risk into proximity with one of the county's most important water resources. This is not a risk that benefits the community. It is a risk the community would bear so that a Texas-based corporation could maximize the profitable life of its waste disposal facility.
Community Health and Quality of Life
Landfills produce more than solid waste problems. They produce odors, noise from heavy equipment and truck traffic, airborne dust and particulate matter, and road wear on routes used by residents going about their daily lives. As a landfill expands, so do these impacts.
Residents living near the Riverbend Landfill have documented odor problems, road damage from waste hauling trucks, and concerns about property values. These impacts do not fall equally across the community — they fall most heavily on those who live and work closest to the facility. Expanding the landfill would extend the operational period during which these neighbors bear disproportionate burdens for a waste disposal system that serves the entire region.
A community that values equity and shared responsibility should be asking: What can we do to reduce the burden on the people who live closest to our waste disposal facilities? The answer is not to expand those facilities. The answer is to produce less waste that needs to be disposed there.
Economic Arguments Against Expansion
Proponents of landfill expansion often frame it as an economic necessity — a cost-effective way to manage waste compared to the more expensive alternatives. But this framing ignores both the full costs of landfilling and the full value of what would be lost.
The full costs of landfilling include long-term monitoring and maintenance costs that extend decades beyond a landfill's closure, potential liability for contamination, and the foregone economic value of land that could have remained in productive agricultural use. When those long-term costs are factored in, landfilling is rarely as cheap as its proponents suggest.
The value of what would be lost includes not just the market value of the farmland being converted, but the economic contributions of Yamhill County's agricultural sector — its wine industry, its direct farm sales, its agritourism economy. Yamhill County's wine country is a brand asset that generates significant tax revenue, employment, and economic activity. Decisions that threaten that brand have economic consequences that extend well beyond the boundary of the landfill itself.
The Alternatives Exist
One of the most important points to make in any discussion of landfill expansion is this: the alternatives exist. This is not a situation where communities must choose between expanding the landfill and drowning in waste. Proven, cost-effective waste management alternatives are available, and many communities that have invested in them have dramatically reduced their landfill dependency.
Oregon's statewide goal for waste reduction calls for reducing per-capita disposal rates over time. Yamhill County has room to improve its performance against that goal by expanding and improving recycling programs, establishing commercial food waste collection and composting programs, and investing in community education that helps residents understand what they can do to reduce household waste.
The argument that these alternatives are not feasible or not cost-effective at scale is not supported by the experience of comparable Oregon communities. What it typically reflects is insufficient political will to challenge the waste management status quo and invest in the infrastructure needed to support better outcomes.
Our Position
Waste Not of Yamhill County's position is clear: the Riverbend Landfill should not be expanded onto exclusive farm use land. Not now. Not with the waste reduction alternatives available. Not when the county has not yet demonstrated that those alternatives have been maximized to their fullest potential.
If Yamhill County were to set ambitious waste diversion goals, invest in the programs and infrastructure needed to achieve them, and demonstrate over a sustained period that those programs were insufficient to meet the county's waste management needs — then the conversation about additional landfill capacity would be a different one. We are nowhere near that point. The county is nowhere near having maximized its alternatives.
In the meantime, we will continue to pursue every legal avenue available to protect Yamhill County's farmland, water resources, and community health from unnecessary industrial expansion. We will continue to advocate for the waste management policies that Oregon's communities deserve. And we will continue to make the case that Yamhill County's future depends on making better choices about waste — starting now.