Iowa City landfill receives $4M from EPA to expand composting

The Iowa City Landfill and Recycling Center has received a $4 million grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to help expand its composting efforts, the city announced Friday.

The funding, which stems from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed in 2021, will expand the landfill’s compost area from 5 to about 7 acres. Designs for the expansion will begin this fall, with construction expected to begin in the spring of 2024.

The expansion will increase processing capacity from 15,000 to 20,000 tons per year — an addition big enough to fill about 500 garbage trucks. That compost then will be sold to fertilize area farms, gardens and lawns.

The money also will allow for improved equipment and technology, including updated equipment that can turn compost faster to move through material quicker. Mixing up compost frequently helps the materials breakdown faster.

“The City of Iowa City is honored to receive this significant infrastructure award from the Investing in America program,” City Manager Geoff Fruin said in a statement. “These funds will enable us to expand and modernize our existing compost facility to better meet the future needs of our growing community.”

The Iowa City landfill, at 3900 Hebl Ave. SW, oversees one of the only large-scale composting facilities in Iowa that processes food waste, serving customers in Johnson County and in Kalona and Riverside in Washington County.

Curbside compost collection began for Iowa City in 2017 for about 16,500 residents. Since then, total compost has continued to climb about 1,000 tons each year on average. Still, 20 percent of waste that enters the landfill is food waste that could have been composted. That results in about 27,000 tons of food waste not being composted, which contributes methane emissions that trap heat in the atmosphere.

The extra funding will increase composting efforts in the county for families who don’t have access to the curbside services. For example, it will expand the pilot program, Food Waste Wednesdays, where those families can drop off their food waste.

Thanks to the added capacity, the Iowa City landfill would like to eventually work on diverting food waste from local grocery stores and restaurants to the compost facility.

“That's probably a couple years out. We're going to have to build the facility before we can handle that material,” said Jennifer Jordan, the Iowa City superintendent of resource management. “But that is definitely on the radar.”

Brittney J. Miller is the Energy & Environment Reporter for The Gazette and a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues.

Comments: (319) 398-8370; brittney.miller@thegazette.com