Waste Management Eyes Landfill Expansion

A proposal from Waste Management to expand its landfill in Menomonee Falls could extend its active life to 2032, said Village Manager Mark Fitzgerald.

This latest proposal is in its early stages, and on Monday the Village Board created a committee to negotiate the terms of the expansion. Fitzgerald; Trustee Jeffrey Steliga; and William Holz and Mary Stark, who have been members of previous landfill siting committees, will sit on the new committee.

The current request replaces a previous request for expansion that Waste Management submitted to the village in October 2008. Once negotiations begin, the process could take years.

“It’s an economic decision, but it’s also a decision on whether the village wants to see the landfill expand on that basis,” Fitzgerald said. “Once you start the process, the timeline is never very specific. My guess this is a couple-year process.”

Waste Management would like to expand its landfill operations into roughly 200 acres bordered by Main Street and 124th Street, which east of the active Orchard Ridge expansion landfill. The land contains buildings and storage owned by Waste Management that would likely be relocated onto other lands owned by the company.

The current Orchard Ridge expansion landfill will still be active for about seven years until it reaches capacity. The land in the proposed expansion would become an active landfill once capacity is reached, and the proposed 200-acre site would likely reach capacity between 2030 and 2032.

“It’s not an active landfill at this point. They are proposing that at some point in the future they will start filling this area where they currently have buildings,” Fitzgerald said. “There are a lot of long-term aspects to this. This is a landfill zone that would take more than a decade to fill.”

The village receives a per-ton tipping fees from Waste Management for the landfill. Revenues from tipping fees have helped fund the library and renovations to village hall. From 1994 to 2008, the village received roughly $30 million in tipping fee revenue.