QuickTake:

Lane County’s push to collect more fees for accepting trash experienced another setback after Creswell dissolved a decades-old intergovernmental agreement with the county. The move comes amid a wider backdrop of declining revenue and waste dropped off at the county’s Short Mountain Landfill.

Lane County is continuing its push to convince trash hauler Sanipac to drop solid waste it collects at the county’s Short Mountain Landfill instead of the hauler’s privately owned landfill near Medford.

In Creswell, however, councilors have voted to exit from an intergovernmental agreement between Lane County and the city that would otherwise require the company, Sanipac, to pay system benefit fees to the county’s solid waste disposal fund. Texas-based Waste Connections owns Sanipac, a regional hauler.  

The Creswell council’s Monday, April 13, unanimous vote comes as the county is trying to increase the overall waste dropped off at Short Mountain Landfill to drive up revenues, stay competitive and potentially collect enough waste required for CleanLane, a planned recycling facility, to operate as intended.

Lane County Administrator Steve Mokrohisky gave commissioners a brief update on the Creswell vote and the county’s push to reach an agreement with Waste Connections. The county has proposed a five-year deal to lower the tipping fee at the Short Mountain Landfill from $112.46 to $100 per ton for compacted waste starting July 1, with the rates adjusted annually for inflation.

“We still have not received a response to our proposal, which we think is a really compelling proposal to lower our tipping fee, which is a win-win for everyone,” Mokrohisky told commissioners Tuesday, April 14.

Currently, the $112.46 tipping fee at the Lane County landfill includes a $53.63 system benefit fee to pay for waste and recycling services. The tipping fee at Waste Connections’ near Medford site is $97.63.

Lane County’s solid waste disposal fund has lost $5.2 million in fee revenue during the last fiscal year, county records show. That fund, which doesn’t rely upon taxpayer revenue, pays for a system of transfer stations that collect trash in rural areas and operational costs of the county’s landfill, hazardous waste disposal and recycling. County officials have warned that without increased revenues, they will have to look at cuts, such as closing or reducing hours of operation at transfer stations.

County officials maintain that haulers owe the system benefit fees regardless of where the trash is hauled. But the system benefit fees are typically collected at Short Mountain Landfill when trash is dropped off, meaning the county lacks a mechanism for collecting the fees in cases where trash is dumped outside the county.

Creswell councilors discussed the issue at their March 23 work session prior to the vote this week. 

Minutes from that work session show councilors wanted to keep costs down for residents – and to stay out of a dispute between the hauler and the county. 

A Creswell memo states that Sanipac had been hauling Creswell-generated trash to its Dry Creek landfill near Medford. But when officials discovered the 2000 agreement, Sanipac began dropping off waste at the Short Mountain Landfill instead of the Medford site and has absorbed the system benefit fees.

Sanipac told the city it can no longer absorb the higher costs and would have to increase rates by 4% for residential customers if those costs are passed on. 

“The city has communicated to both parties that Creswell does not wish to be placed in the middle of these negotiations or be subject to an uncertain timeline,” the memo, written by Creswell City Manager Vincent Martorello, states. “The city’s primary objective remains clear: to avoid rate increases for Creswell customers resulting from external negotiations.”

The council’s decision to dissolve its agreement with the county clears the way for Sanipac to resume transporting Creswell-generated trash to the Medford location.

Creswell’s move away from its agreement with Lane County is part of a larger issue the county is having with its waste collection. The county estimates that the Waste Connections-owned landfill near Medford receives about 7,000 tons of waste a month from Lane County, or more than 80,000 tons a year. That includes Creswell and other communities, including Springfield.

Overall, the county’s landfill tonnage has dropped nearly 15% in the past year. The landfill received 299,273 tons in 2024 and 254,735 tons in 2025. 

Lane County has not received payments for any of the waste sent to Medford, a county memo says. 

Different cities have different approaches. In Eugene, an intergovernmental agreement between the city and county still exists that requires haulers to pay the fee, and they also haul to Short Mountain. 

No similar agreement is in place In Springfield, although a 1999 ordinance allowed a franchised waste hauler to impose additional charges to recover county fees. Until July 1, 2025, Waste Connections charged Springfield customers a “county user fee,” which was renamed “disposal fee,” a county memo says.

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Ben Botkin covers politics and policy in Lane County. He has worked as a journalist since 2003, most recently at the Oregon Capital Chronicle, where he covered justice, health and human services and documented regional efforts to combat fentanyl addiction. Botkin has worked in statehouses in Idaho, Nevada, Oklahoma and, of course, Oregon. When he's not working, you'll find him road tripping across the West, hiking or surfing along the Oregon Coast.