QuickTake:

Waste Connections, which runs Sanipac, has told the county it is not required to pay fees on some trash collections that are taken to a dump in southern Oregon. The county disagrees.

Lane County’s Waste Management Division is losing millions of dollars in revenue as haulers bypass its Short Mountain Landfill outside Eugene and dump garbage at a landfill near Medford instead.

County officials are trying to slow the financial bleeding, saying the waste haulers are failing to pay a fee mandated by county ordinance when haulers collect trash in Lane County and ship it outside the county. Sanipac, a subsidiary of Texas-based Waste Connections Inc., is the biggest operator in the county that is not paying the fees.

In correspondence between the company and the county, Sanipac shows no signs of backing down.

In the past year, the county estimates its revenues have dropped $5.2 million. 

The dispute has been brewing for months, records show, and it’s unlikely to be resolved anytime soon. 

At issue is a “system benefit fee” that haulers pay. The fee helps support waste-related services in Lane County. Sanipac, which hauls garbage from Eugene to the county’s Short Mountain Landfill, pays the fee there.

But the company also hauls garbage from Springfield and unincorporated portions of the county to a landfill it owns in Jackson County, in southern Oregon. Sanipac says it says it doesn’t have to pay the fee to Lane County in those cases. In the case of Springfield, the company says it doesn’t have to pay the fee because there’s no intergovernmental agreement in place between the city and Lane County.

Lane County officials say they’re working with Springfield on such an agreement, which would allow the county to collect the fee on trash collected inside Springfield city limits.

And county officials also say they need access to Sanipac’s data to determine how much money they believe is owed in system benefit fees.

On Nov. 14, 2025, the county sent Sanipac a letter seeking payment of the fees for the past four years, but didn’t specify an amount. The letter sought payment by Monday, Dec. 15, warning that under county code it can pursue “any legal remedy” if the fees aren’t paid.

“What we’re calling out is the impact of that on the system that we’re trying to operate here in Lane County,” County Administrator Steve Mokrohisky said. “Because they’re refusing to remit this fee.”

Officials from Sanipac and its Texas-based corporate parent, Waste Connections Inc., didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment. However, in correspondence to the county, Sanipac’s attorneys defend its actions, noting the lack of a required intergovernmental agreement with Springfield and the fact that the company has been shipping trash to Jackson County since 2023.

Lane County trash history 

The issue dates to 1999, when haulers began diverting trash to the privately owned Coffin Butte Landfill near Corvallis, thereby avoiding so-called “tipping fees” at Lane County’s landfills.

In response, the county passed an ordinance to create a system benefit fee that solid waste haulers must pay, regardless of where they dispose of their trash. The system benefit fee funds the county’s waste-related services, such as transfer, recycling and household hazardous waste disposal.

Essentially, it’s a user fee that keeps the county’s infrastructure for waste collection services running, services that residents and haulers can access. 

“If the haulers all take their waste out of the county, the local system falls apart,” Mokrohisky said. “That’s why they (county officials) implemented the system benefit fee. We need to have this fee so we can maintain the public system that we all value so people aren’t dumping.”

Fast-forward to 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.

Sanipac’s attorney, E. Michael Connors, defended the company, telling the county in a Dec. 9 response that the hauler was “very open and public” with the county and Springfield about its plans to start using the Jackson County landfill. 

Citing state Department of Environmental Quality reports, the county estimates the landfill near Medford receives about 7,000 tons of waste a month from Lane County — more than 80,000 tons a year. Lane County has not received payments for any of that waste, a county memo says.

In comparison, Republic Services, which serves the Junction City area, pays the system benefit fee and takes its trash out of the county to the Coffin Butte Landfill, and has done so for more than 10 years.

Finances under strain  

The county’s Waste Management Division is funded entirely through fees. No tax dollars are allocated to the division, which includes 120 employees in programs that include 15 transfer stations, recycling and nuisance abatement.

Between the drop in revenues and inflation, the division ended the fiscal year with a balance that was $2.5 million lower than anticipated. To cover that gap, county officials need to tap into reserves temporarily and defer an annual funding transfer planned to develop the county’s next landfill expansion, which will start construction in 2028.

A county memo says those temporary measures cannot continue: “The current trend is not sustainable.”

The $5.2 million drop in revenue includes declines in all the division’s fees, which encompasses the system benefit fees, the disposal fees and others. 

The system benefit fee is nearly 48% of total fees — the only portion required when the trash is taken outside Lane County. That’s about $2.4 million for the past fiscal year.

Yet county officials say services funded by that fee must continue for all residents, regardless of whether their hauler pays the fee.

“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 Division is not on track to build reserves for the construction of the next phase/cell of the Short Mountain Landfill which is expected to begin construction in 2028.”

The exact amount that the county believes it is owed from Sanipac is difficult for officials to pin down. That’s because the company collects trash in Springfield as well as unincorporated Lane County, where an intergovernmental agreement is not needed. The county doesn’t have data showing the breakdown of lost fees between Springfield and unincorporated parts of the county.

The Springfield connection 

Springfield, served by Sanipac, is a key part of the picture. 

After the county passed its system benefit fee, Lane County and other cities such as Eugene, Florence, Oakridge and Creswell developed intergovernmental agreements so the county’s fee would apply to waste collected within those city limits. 

Springfield, meanwhile, adopted the system benefit fee into its city code, which states the hauler is authorized to impose an “additional charge to provide recovery for the imposition of Lane County disposal system and benefit fees upon the hauler by Lane County.”

Springfield’s schedule of fees includes a “county user fee,” which was renamed “disposal fee” in July after county officials started asking in March about the fees that the hauler collects and doesn’t give to Lane County.

Springfield’s role is to set the maximum fees, and the city is not responsible for collecting the system benefit fees for the county or the hauler. 

Residential trash service in Springfield costs more per month than Eugene. It’s $23.56 a month in Springfield, including the $5.03 “disposal” fee, compared to $20.67 a month in Eugene for weekly service with a 35-gallon can.

County officials still receive Sanipac trash hauled from Eugene at the Short Mountain Landfill, where the company pays the fees. As a result, Springfield residents pay more for the same trash collection service — one that takes their waste to Jackson County instead of Lane County.

Mokrohisky said the county wanted to air the information about the county user fee for public awareness. Residents in Springfield should not face an increased rate due to the county’s efforts to get the system benefit fee, he said, stressing a county user fee is already included in Springfield’s rate structure.

“Our point of bringing up what the rates are is to say we don’t believe that there should be an increase in the rate,” he said.

County officials acknowledge they need an intergovernmental agreement with Springfield so they have the authority to collect that fee from the hauler. They’ve started talking with Springfield and sent the city a draft agreement. County officials don’t expect action on that until 2026.

Elyse Ditzel, a spokesperson for Springfield, said the agreement is under review. If the city council approves the agreement in 2026, it would not take effect before July 2026. In an email, Ditzel noted the county’s system benefit fee is the responsibility of the hauler under the county code.

“We are committed to a transparent process and will return to council soon with a more detailed legal and policy analysis” of the county’s claims and the draft agreement, Ditzel said.

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For two decades, Ben Botkin’s journalism career saw him criss-cross the West, a path with stops in rural Idaho, Las Vegas and, now, finally, Lane County. Ben reported on local government and the statehouse in Idaho before he moved to the Bulletin in Bend and covered education in central Oregon.

Then, for four years, he covered Clark County government, which has oversight over the Las Vegas Strip, and served as the lead political reporter during the 2016 election cycle. During that time, Ben wrote about the county’s child welfare agency, law enforcement, the start of Nevada’s medical marijuana industry and homeland security. His reporting sparked the criminal indictments and convictions of three government officials, including a city animal control supervisor convicted of animal cruelty.

He also covered national stories like the 2016 armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon and the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas.

Since 2018, Ben has reported on Oregon state government, first for the Statesman-Journal in Salem and then for The Lund Report, a Portland-based nonprofit that covers health care. His reporting on gaps in children’s health coverage led to state Medicaid policy changes.

Most recently, Ben worked more than two years at the Oregon Capital Chronicle, where he covered criminal justice, health and human services. His work often incorporates the voices of vulnerable Oregonians from all walks of life.

As Lookout’s Politics & Policy Correspondent, Ben digs up the most intriguing and relevant stories about how Lane County decisions impact residents.