What does the future hold for Lyon County C&D landfill site?
Lyon County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday heard a presentation concerning the future of the Construction & Demolition Landfill in Russell. At the end of discussion, commissioners took a wait-and-see route before committing on a decision on closure options.
Currently, C&D waste is managed at the County’s Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) Landfill north of Russell; that facility has been in operation for about 30 years, with its main purpose being to support projects within the county.
Burns & McDonnell Solid Waste Department Manager Fred Doran and Lyon County Environmental Director Roger Schroeder spoke to commissioners about the County’s option on how to move forward.
“The State has been quite aggressively incentivize those online facilities to close,” said Schroeder.
Most of the County’s C&D waste is hauled to Rock County, which brings its garbage to Lyon County a few times every day, and takes back Lyon County’s C&D waste. But that partnership doesn’t seem to have much of a future, and Lyon County has been asked to consider not shipping as much waste there in order to conserve space at that site. Schroeder said there is about three years worth of capacity left at the Rock County landfill. Choosing to send C&D waste to Russell could force Lyon County to hire another employee there, and possibly have to increase tipping fees again.
“There are a few different options that we are looking at on what timeline would be possible for Lyon County to be on for closing our facility by Russell and what the impact to our own MSW landfill in terms of how we manage that C&D waste knowing that in a very short time, Rock County will not be an option.”
Closure options for the County include closing before promulgation (putting a law into effect by official proclamation) while would bring in no additional revenue; or implementing tradition periods of either two, five or six years. Closure costs now or in two years would amount to $600,000; taking on a fiveyear transition period would cost $1.1 million; and a sixyear transition period would cost $1.2 million; closure costs go up depending on the type of cover that is needed. There would be no additional annual revenue if the landfill is closed now.
“There are 70-80 landfills in the state like your demolition landfill, and a lot of those are going to close,” Doran said. “If you close, there’s going to be a need for disposal … it’s going to have to go to a MSW landfill, it’s going to have to go onto a truck to be hauled somewhere. There’s going to be these disposal deserts that are going to be created, including down here in the southwest (part of the state).”
Doran said consequences of closing the landfill in Russell would be an increase in C&D waste disposal costs; potential village dumps and burning; stalled or delayed economic development projects’ loss of MSW disposal capacity and no low-cost capacity flowing storm events.
“Landfills have closure plans, post-closure plans — how the County’s going to manage the site 30 years after closure — and now these rules are requiring a custodial care plan, something beyond what the MSW rules have right now, said Doran.
Schroder said the Russell site is being monitored on an annual basis, and no sustained problems have been discovered.
“At this site, we typically do not see sustained contamination,” he said. “We’ve had an arsenic hit, a manganese hit … they seem to spike in the spring, but we don’t detect them when we do our follow-up detection.”
Lyon County Board Chair Gary Crowley asked if the County has the space to put C&D waste now, why not maximize the capacity available.
“Let it time out, fill it up and then cover it,” he said. “I think we need to just wait and see where this goes.”
In other news from Tuesday … • The board OK’d tobacco license renews for the Balaton Municipal Store and Balaton One Stop
• The board adopted the 2026 Comprehensive Land Use Plan, which will become effective Jan 1, 2026.
• The Truth-in-Taxation public hearing took place Tuesday night in Marshall. The proposed property tax levy increase of 9.9% will be certified at the Dec. 16 board of commissioners meeting.
