By Aileen Hymas
For Columbia Gorge News
THE DALLES — For years, residents living near the Wasco County Landfill south of The Dalles have voiced concerns about sharing the road with a growing volume of heavy, long-distance truck traffic navigating the winding, sometimes steep residential roads leading to the landfill.
Now, the county has approved an agreement with the landfill to pursue a brand-new road separating traffic and giving trucks their own pathway from Highway 197 to the landfill — a plan the landfill has agreed to pay for.
The Wasco County Landfill, owned by Texas-based multinational corporation Waste Connections, is one of the region’s primary solid waste hubs. Records obtained in a 2024 investigation by Columbia Gorge News show that for the last decade, waste coming from the Portland metro area has quadrupled, the out-of-state volume doubled and the total yearly intake has gone from 444,000 tons in 2014 to more than 1 million tons in 2023. For every ton of waste, the county receives host fees, earning an estimated $1.9 million in the 2026-2027 budget and placing the landfill as its sixth-highest single source of income behind property taxes, state and federal funds, enterprise districts and investment earnings.
The memorandum of understanding between the county and the landfill acknowledges that “the volume and weight of landfill-bound traffic, including a substantial portion of out-of-region tonnage, have materially exceeded the road’s original design capacity, resulting in accelerated deterioration and increased public maintenance costs.”
Wasco County Administrator Tyler Stone said the county currently spends “upwards of $50,000 a year” maintaining Five Mile and Steele roads.
Stone said the memorandum of understanding approved at a regular board meeting Aug. 5 is not a binding document, “but it’s setting out the role that the county and Waste Connections will play in a discussion around how do we make this circumstance that exists today better — better for the landfill, better for our citizens, and safer.”
What the county is promising to do
The county agreed to assign its public works department to the preliminary surveying and engineering, coordinate with the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT), and pursue all landowner outreach, easements and potential purchases of land to create the new road.
“The county is going to take the lead working with ODOT,” said Public Works Director Arthur Smith. “Our surveyor is out there looking at the ground and elevation, looking for a suitable path to put that road at. We’re doing that work.”
The county also agreed to track all the initial feasibility costs and waive reimbursements for its initial planning time investment on this project.
“Obviously, building roads is not an easy undertaking because it’s expensive to build a road, you have private landowners, and then we want to make those conditions better than what they are,” Stone said.
What the landfill is promising to do
The memorandum says the Wasco County Landfill will provide the county with data, pay the full cost of the design, feasibility studies, land acquisition, engineering, permitting and construction of the new road.
Derek Ranta, Pacific Northwest Division vice president of Waste Connections, has already signed this document, along with Wasco County Landfill Site Manager Nancy Mitchell.
“Waste Connections has always been a very good community partner with us,” said Commissioner Jeff Justesen. “We have a good relationship working several different ways with them.”
Commission Chair Scott Hege acknowledged that the truck traffic concerns on Five Mile Road have been ongoing for many years, and county staff has discussed this problem with the landfill, state officials and local legislators for years.
“We understand the concerns, we understand the challenges, we understand all of it and we’re trying to find a solution, but that’s not easy. It’s not cheap, and it’s not going to happen quickly,” he said. “But we’re working on it, so this is one good step in that direction.”
What about the Portland Harbor Superfund Site?
Staff and commissioners emphasized that the timing of this new road does not correspond with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) current deliberations on which landfill to send the Portland Harbor Superfund Site cleanup debris.
“This has been a conversation that has been in play now for a number of years, and it has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with Portland Harbor cleanup,” Stone said.
As of its most recent update in June 26, the EPA has not specified where it plans to inter the nearly 5 million tons of toxic riverbottom mud, polluted over the last century by industrial production along the Willamette River and designated a superfund site in 2000.
The agency estimated that if selected, the Wasco County Landfill would receive 120 trucks of this waste per day, June through October, for 13 years.
At a September 2025 meeting of the Portland Harbor Collaborative, the late Commissioner Phil Brady spoke to the EPA and community leaders about the current traffic concerns on Five Mile Road and urged the collaborative to choose a different landfill for the project.
“I’ve been monitoring that situation very closely, working with Waste Connections, working with the Neighbors for Clean Air, who have done some work up here,” said Justesen.
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