QuickTake:

A Texas-based waste handler is hauling Lane County residents’ trash to a landfill near Medford instead of the county’s landfill and thereby avoiding fees.

Lane County is losing millions of dollars as waste haulers are opting to export trash to a landfill near Medford instead of the county-managed Short Mountain Landfill. 

Waste Connections Inc., a Texas-based corporation, is responsible for most of the county’s loss of $5.2 million in fee revenue during the last fiscal year, county records show. The company has been hauling to its privately owned landfill in Jackson County instead of the county’s Short Mountain Landfill.

The losses are forcing the county to look at ways to stop waste from making its way south to Jackson County and instead enter the Short Mountain site — and keep a broader Lane County-run waste management system financially afloat. When haulers bring their trash to Lane County’s landfill, they pay fees that feed into the county’s solid waste disposal fund. The fund relies upon those fees and does not receive tax dollars. 

That fund, in turn, pays for 15 transfer stations throughout the county, operational costs of the county’s landfill, hazardous waste disposal, and recycling. Without adequate funding, the county could have to cut back on its waste management services, potentially closing or reducing some transfer stations, which could lead to illegal dumping in rural Lane County, creating more expensive challenges in the long run.

To prevent that scenario, Lane County officials are negotiating with Waste Connections and simultaneously considering an array of policy measures intended to make the county’s landfill a more attractive and competitive option for haulers. County staff briefed commissioners on the available options, which include lowering the tipping fees that haulers pay for each ton of trash they leave at the landfill. The move is intended to convince Waste Connections to use the county landfill instead of its own landfill. 

“This is a really big deal,” County Administrator Steve Mokrohisky told commissioners in a presentation Tuesday, March 31.

The county’s proposal to Waste Connections included lowering its 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 across a five-year agreement. 

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’ site is $97.63. 

Negotiations have uncertain outcome

The conflict underscores the tension between Lane County and Waste Connections, a publicly traded company with a strategy of looking for smaller or midsized markets to dominate, its public filings show. 

County commissioners did not make a final decision Tuesday but agreed to continue exploring options. Those include: more negotiations with the hauler, an audit of Waste Connections’ records of its service in unincorporated areas of Lane County, and looking into franchising waste haulers in unincorporated Lane County as a tool to regulate the system. It’s uncertain how much waste from unincorporated Lane County has gone to Jackson County, another factor in the conflict.

The county also will prepare potential service reductions to address the budget shortfall.  

Officials from Waste Connections-owned hauler Sanipac did not speak to commissioners. The company didn’t respond to a request for comment but correspondence and public records show that as of March 23, the company had more questions for the county. 

“We understand that the County staff feels the need to report back to the Board of County Commissioners soon about this issue, but it is difficult for us to provide a substantive response in such a short timeframe given some of the complexities involved and need for clarification,” Mike Connors, an attorney representing Sanipac wrote in a March 23 memo to the county counsel. 

In that memo, the company said it is willing to explore an arrangement to send a limited amount of waste to the county landfill in exchange for some county services in its franchise areas, such as household hazardous waste services. 

“Sanipac appreciates the County’s willingness to engage on these issues and remains open to working toward a mutually agreeable resolution,” he added.

Mokrohisky, the county administrator, said the company’s response was “a little disappointing” after the county put forward a “very specific, very direct proposal.”

Some commissioners expressed disappointment with the hauler for not paying the money and forcing them to potentially bargain for a fee that is intended to benefit taxpayers who rely upon the county’s waste management system. 

“I don’t personally feel like I’m willing to bargain with the taxpayers’ money that’s due them,” Commissioner Heather Buch said.

On the other hand, Commissioner David Loveall said he was concerned about the discount hurting the long-term sustainability of the system.

“To me that doesn’t sound like we’re going in the right direction,” Loveall said.

How we got here 

This is not the first time the county has faced a loss of revenue from a competing landfill. In the late 1990s, that happened when haulers started to send waste to the privately owned Coffin Butte Landfill near Corvallis.

In 1999, county commissioners implemented a system benefit fee, which requires waste haulers to pay regardless of where they send trash. Essentially, it’s a user fee that keeps the county’s infrastructure for waste collection services running, services that residents and haulers can access.


Usually that’s collected through the landfill when haulers pay the tipping fees, which include the $53.63 system benefit fee. The county maintains that haulers are required to still pay that fee — not the full tipping fee — when they haul trash to other facilities. 

Yet the entire county receives waste management services through the system benefit fees, even areas where haulers don’t pay the fees. This has created a financial logjam for the county.

“Not receiving these fees, while continuing to provide the same level of services to residents, has eroded the ability to set aside sufficient funds for landfill development, closure and post-closure care,” the county memo says. “Most urgently, the Waste Management Division is not on track to build reserves for the construction of the next phase of Short Mountain Landfill which is expected to begin construction in 2028.”

In 2021, Sanipac started to transfer locally collected solid waste to EcoSort, a sorting facility in Springfield, which the parent corporation also owns. EcoSort, in turn, transported about 50 tons of solid waste per month to a Georgia Pacific-owned facility called Juno in Lincoln City. That ramped up, county records show, to more than 2,000 tons per month in 2022.

That same year, Waste Connections acquired Rogue Disposal & Recycling, a company that owns the Dry Creek Landfill near Medford. Now, EcoSort receives garbage from Sanipac and Cottage Grove Garbage Service and transfers it to the Dry Creek Landfill.

Based on state data, 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. 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 that waste sent to Medford, a county memo says. Waste Connection has not paid the system benefit fees for trash it collects in Springfield, which reflects how cities have different approaches to the fee.

In Eugene, an intergovernmental agreement with the city and county requires haulers to pay the fee, and they also haul to Short Mountain. 

Springfield, on the other hand, does not have an intergovernmental agreement, though its 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. 

Commissioner Pat Farr pointed out that Sanipac hauls trash to a distant site. A discarded banana peel in Springfield will end up in Jackson County, passing by a county landfill on the nearly three-hour journey, Farr said. 

“The good people in Jackson County get Springfield’s waste,” Farr said. 

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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.