New Iowa law allows yard waste in landfills in certain conditions

CEDAR RAPIDS — State law has changed in a way that one day dramatically could affect how homeowners and home renters here take care of a most fundamental task — getting rid of waste.

For more than 20 years, Iowa has required communities to divert yard waste from landfills as a way to extend the life of the landfills while turning the organic waste into useful compost.

Residents with city garbage pickup in Cedar Rapids have a gray garbage cart, a blue recycling cart and a big green cart for yard waste.

The new state law permits communities to put yard waste into landfills if the landfill has a mechanism in place as does the Cedar Rapids/Linn County Solid Waste Agency's landfill to capture gas produced by the decomposition of waste and turn it into renewable energy.

Linn County Supervisor Brent Oleson, a member of the Solid Waste Agency board, said the new law is little short of a sea change.

'It's like one morning you get up and coffee is good for you and makes you live longer, and the next morning, it's bad for you,' Oleson said. 'So it's confusing. But then I thought, OK, we need to let science lead us to the best options.'

Karmin McShane, the agency's executive director, on Tuesday said the agency and the statewide association of landfills supported the law change because it gives landfills another option in an industry in which waste-to-energy projects of one sort or another are regularly proposed.

At the same time, McShane called it a 180-degree shift in thinking in a state where the Iowa Department of Natural Resources has quantified success for years by how much a community keeps out of a landfill.

Department of Natural Resources spokesman Kevin Baskins said Tuesday that the Metro Waste Authority in the Des Moines metro area introduced the legislation, not the DNR. His organization, he added, did not take a position on the legislation.

McShane said the law change on the handling of yard waste fits a larger concept of environmental management. Important, too, are greenhouse gas emissions, fuel use, the amount of equipment needed and the hours it runs and the conversion of waste to renewable energy, she said.

For now, McShane said the Solid Waste Agency does not anticipate making any changes, and it will continue to keep yard waste out of its active landfill at County Home Road and Highway 13.

However, Cedar Rapids City Council member Ralph Russell, chairman of the agency's board, said Tuesday he expected that the agency board will discuss the issue and that the city will study what the ability to put yard waste into the landfill might mean for its solid-waste collection operation and costs.

Cedar Rapids operates three fleets of trucks — those that pick up garbage, those that pick up recyclables and those that pick up yard waste.

The new rule on yard waste would allow one truck to pick up both garbage and yard waste, holding out the prospect for the need for fewer trucks and less fuel to operate them.

Steve Hershner, Cedar Rapids's utilities director and a Solid Waste Agency board member, said Tuesday that his department will incorporate the new state law change into the development of its budget for the next fiscal year as the city evaluates how the change affects customer service and the efficiency of operations.

The Metro Waste Agency in the Des Moines metro area is farther along in investigating the new yard waste law, and a study commissioned for the agency by SCS Engineers of West Des Moines concluded that placing yard waste in the agency's landfill near Mitchellville could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 11 percent.

Leslie Irlbeck, the agency's program and outreach manager, on Tuesday said the study's conclusion is based on two premises: a reduction in the number of truck trips needed for pickup if garbage trucks pick up both trash and yard waste at the same time; and an increase in the production of landfill gas with the inclusion of fast-decomposing yard waste in the landfill.

She and the Cedar Rapids/Linn County agency's McShane both said their agencies' compost operations continue to struggle to find a market for the product.

Five landfills in Iowa are affected by the law change on yard waste because of their ability to capture landfill gas and turn it into energy. Those are the Cedar Rapids/Linn County and Des Moines area landfills and ones in Scott County, Winnebago County and Des Moines County.

The Iowa City Landfill captures gas but burns it off and does not now convert it to energy.