Long-haul trash traffic threatens residents near Wasco County Landfill

One afternoon in May, Fargher headed home after coaching a junior high track practice. She took State Highway 197 traveling north and passed a heavy tree service bucket truck approximately eight miles before her left turn onto Five Mile Road.

When Fargher arrived at her turn, she found a significant amount of southbound traffic coming from the opposite direction: A long parade of semi-trucks headed for the Wasco County Landfill, slowly turning on to Five Mile. A little over two-and-a-half miles away from this intersection, the landfill brings hundreds of trucks carrying solid waste, mainly from Portland and Vancouver.

Fargher stopped at her turn, her blinker clicking.

Glancing into her rearview mirror, she saw the bucket truck barreling toward her at the highway’s typical 65 mile-per-hour speed, but it wasn’t slowing down. She described locking eyes with the other driver.

“I saw the second he realized that he was going to hit me, and I just gunned it as fast as I could to the right,” she said.

Fargher barely missed the guardrail while swerving into the gravel driveway across from Five Mile Road. She watched the bucket truck sideswipe the guardrail, metal shrilling against metal.

“I came as close to getting hit and probably killed as I ever have in my life,” Fargher said. “I was bawling.”

While residents in the area surrounding the Wasco County Landfill have shared their roads with long-distance trucks for years, many say a decade’s worth of steady traffic increases has brought with it an uptick in garbage littering the roads, reckless truck drivers, and hazardous traffic conditions.

According to documents obtained from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, the amount of solid waste accepted at the landfill has doubled over the past 10years.

While trash from Wasco County has increased by 37% since 2014, from 18,000 tons in 2014 to 24,600 tons last year, volumes from Multnomah County have quadrupled in the same time period, from 53,000 tons in 2014 to 204,000 tons last year. 

Some other categories have doubled, or nearly doubled, such as waste received from Hood River, Jefferson County, and the ‘non-counting waste’ category, which includes cover dirt, tire material, rubble, industrial waste and asbestos.

The 2024-25 budget shows the county is expecting to receive more than $2,064,000 in fees from this waste, making the landfill the fourth-highest income source behind property taxes, state funds, and enterprise districts.

Every day, hundreds of trucks exit Highway 197 onto the slope of Five Mile Road, often taking both directional lanes to navigate the narrow turn. There is no turn lane, which frequently results in a bottleneck of heavy traffic in an area with limited visibility.

Ezekiel Eubanks, a volunteer firefighter and a former employee of the Wasco County Landfill, explained the traffic backup often results in frustrated truck drivers who might wait five to 10 minutes to make their turn.

“Finally, they just say ‘screw it,’ pull out in front of moving traffic and make everybody else slow down for them,” he said. “It happens all the time. It’s amazing that we don’t have more accidents there than we do.”

Mandi Williams, a resident of Five Mile, was driving her 8- and 5-year-old children to school in her Toyota Corolla when a semi turned onto Five Mile Road, taking up both lanes. Williams swerved into the ditch to avoid a head-on collision.

“He threw his hands up at me,” Williams said about the semi driver. “I’m so tired of this.”

Williams, who is married to the county’s chief deputy sheriff, said many of her neighbors have stopped reporting dangerous truck incidents because it has become “a daily occurrence.”

Several residents described coming suddenly upon crashed or jack-knifed trucks, the operators of which had failed to place advanced warnings on the road to other drivers.

“I remember having to slam my brakes on and all the snow from the top of my car went over my windshield,” Williams recalled. “I said, ‘You guys don’t have any flares or cones out and we’re coming around this blind corner,’ and their response was, ‘We called it out over the radio.’ Well, I don’t have a radio.”

Fargher said the truck drivers “have absolutely zero [regard] for anyone besides themselves.” She described a semi-truck driver who ran her off Five Mile Road. “He flipped me off and blared his horn at me even though I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Truck traffic has impacted not only this intersection, but also several tight, horseshoe-shaped corners on Five Mile.

“This road wasn’t made for 18-wheelers,” said Linda Wilson, a Five Mile Resident and former PUD director for The Dalles. She pointed out that the road’s painted centerline has been worn away by trucks drifting outside their lane.

On one occasion, a truck struck Wilson’s car, hitting her mirror, but the driver was not apologetic or concerned for Wilson’s safety.

Cindy Keever and her husband Randy have lived on the corner of Highway 197 and Five Mile for more than 30 years, with her mother just across the street. She was first on the scene in a collision where a semi-truck from Madras was negotiating the tight turn onto Five Mile and crashed into a log truck.

“What if that had been a school bus?” she said. “The thought of it makes me ill.”

Five Mile is part of the Dufur School District’s bus route, coming from Highway 197 and traveling a half mile up the road to pick up children.

Keever said she’s watched these buses pull over to pick up children, then wait for an opportunity to re-enter the road as heavy trucks barrel down the hill.

Worries over school bus safety prompted an unpublicized meeting of state and county officials on June 28 at the Highway 197 and Five Mile intersection. State Rep. Greg Smith, R-Heppner, was in attendance, along with leadership from Wasco County, the Oregon Department of Transportation District 4, the Dufur School District and the Keevers.

“Standing at the intersection was [an] eye-opening experience,” Rep. Smith told Columbia Gorge News in an email. “I see how there are safety concerns, especially for the school district.”

While all parties agreed the intersection is problematic for the current volume of truck traffic, the fact that there has been only one serious traffic accident in the last five years puts most state and federal traffic safety funding programs out of reach.

Smith’s legislative director, Dawson Quinton, said the roadside meeting concluded with ODOT and Wasco County Public Works making verbal commitments to sharing information and working on initial project scoping to improve the intersection’s engineering.

“It’s kind of up in the air what we’re going to do,” Quinton said.

New landfill permit brings up longstanding concerns

Frustrations about the truck traffic took on a vocal force in June when the DEQ held a public comment period on a new 10-year operational permit to allow the Wasco County Landfill at 2550 Steele Road to continue collecting waste. It has approximately 30 years of functional use left.

The landfill is a standalone entity acquired in 1999 by Waste Connections, Inc., a Texas-based solid waste corporation collecting from approximately nine million customers in 46 states and six provinces in Canada.

Bloomberg lists the publicly traded company’s net worth at $45.8 billion at the time of printing this article. Last year, Waste Connections announced $8 billion in annual revenue.

Waste Connections has made 70 political donations in Oregon since 2013, including $1,000 to Portland’s Mayor Ted Wheeler’s 2016 campaign, $25,000 to Betsy Johnson’s 2022 gubernatorial campaign, and various PACs (political action committee) including the Oregon Refuse and Recycling PAC, which donated to Rep. Smith’s campaign.

Columbia Gorge News did not receive a response from the Wasco County Landfill or Waste Connections for this story.

Residents who passed on their DEQ comments to Columbia Gorge News said the driving situation is frequently life-threatening.

Eastern Oregon DEQ Public Affairs Specialist Antony Vorboyov told Columbia Gorge News in an email: “DEQ is familiar with concerns about unsafe landfill drivers from public comments received during the public notice period. While DEQ has no authority over the hauling of waste to the landfill, these concerns have been discussed with the landfill.”

While Wasco County officials asserted that all comments should be directed to the DEQ and not the county, dialogue about the landfill and the traffic concerns came up both in public comments June 5 and official discussion June 11 and July 3 in county commissioners meetings.

“There’s garbage all over the roads,” Chief Deputy Sheriff Scott Williams said at the June 5 meeting.

The chief deputy described phone calls the Wasco County Sheriff’s Office routinely receives from residents, not only about garbage on the roads but also reports of long-haul trucks driving unsafely around pedestrians.

“They’re very disrespectful,” he said. “Those trucking companies need to be held accountable for running citizens off the road.”

Eight Mile resident Steve Ronfield told commissioners at the same meeting he believes someone will be killed at the intersection of Highway 197 and Five Mile if nothing is done.

“We’re responsible to do something,” he said. “If we don’t do it, it’s blood on our hands.”

The county has made efforts to distance itself from the landfill’s permit renewal. On June 13, Wasco County Public Information Officer Stephanie Krell put out a notice saying: “It was announced that Wasco County was participating in conjunction with DEQ on this effort; however, that is not the case. Wasco County is not involved in this process.”

On July 29, DEQ sent a response to residents who submitted comments, stating that the agency does not have jurisdiction over truck traffic and recommending residents reach out to Wasco County Roads Department or the Wasco County Sheriff’s Office with concerns.

After touring the landfill, the commissioners said at a July 3 meeting they were satisfied with its management and with the landfill’s promises to address traffic concerns.

“It’s difficult to control the drivers sometimes, but they are, I think, attempting and working very diligently on it,” said Commissioner Scott Hege.

Commissioner Phil Brady reported that the landfill informed him of plans to build a tire-cleaning station trucks will exit through to reduce dirt tracked on the roads.

“Anybody that wants a tour, don’t hesitate to give Nancy a call at the landfill,” Commission Chair Steve Kramer said. “She’d be happy to show you around.”

Landfill is ‘significant part of the county’s financial world’

Most of Wasco County’s landfill revenue comes from a quantity-based host fee scheduled at $1.91 per regular solid waste ton and $10.06 for hazardous waste, most recently raised in January 2024.

Host fees are anticipated to bring in $1,920,000, plus an annual license fee of $145,173. This revenue goes into the county’s general fund.

Through a records request, Columbia Gorge News obtained by records request an hourly truck traffic report created by the landfill on July 17, showing 173 trucks were counted on this day between the hours of 5 a.m. and 3 p.m.

The landfill opens at 8 a.m. and closes at 3 p.m. Monday through Saturday, but according to neighbors, trucks don’t stop coming when the landfill is closed.

Keever said trucks regularly start running by her home as early as 4:15 a.m. and slow down around 5 p.m., but she’s seen and/or heard them pass at odd hours as well.

“I used to not be able to figure that out — if the landfill is only open certain hours, how can there be trucks passing at 2 in the morning and 11:30 at night?” she said. “What they do is they drop off their full load, pick up an empty trailer and then off they go. When the crew gets to the landfill in the morning, they empty those trailers.”

Before truck traffic swelled to its current amount, minutes from a commissioners meeting on April 6, 2011, shows the county commissioners considered potential traffic impacts alongside the financial advantages of increased tonnage coming to the Wasco County Landfill.

Officials from Waste Connections approached the county at this meeting, asking for a $.50 reduction in host fees for a pending contract with an undisclosed party which would bring 60,000 to 100,000 tons of solid waste.

Roadmaster Marty Matherly said this increase would bring additional traffic to the road and require sooner maintenance to roads, but he was not opposed to the request.

Commissioner Hege noted that despite the reduced host fee, this additional tonnage would bring significant revenue to the county.

The minutes note Hege said “the one thing that he has seen is that the Landfill revenue is a significant part of the County’s financial world.”

In Keever’s observation, the county’s public works department takes good care of Five Mile Road adjacent to her property.

“When I get a pothole in front of my house, the county is excellent when I say something about it, excellent about going to patch it up,” she said. “Otherwise, you’d hear that ‘rattle-rattle-rattle’ all the time, because the traffic vibrates inside my house.”

Keever said, however, that she’s concerned about state and county funds going toward traffic mitigation, picking up garbage strewn on the roads and similar activities which she says should be the landfill’s cost of doing business.

“Your business is creating these problems,” Keever said. “It’s up to you, as a business, to mitigate these problems. Wasco County or the State of Oregon shouldn’t have to pay people to take care of those [roads] that are directly being affected by what your business is doing.”

The landfill has communicated to haulers, but poor driving persists

“We have complained to the dump multiple times but they do not seem to care that they are endangering the lives of folks that live nearby,” Mandi Williams said in her DEQ comment.

Former employees say the landfill has been aware of resident concerns for years.

Eubanks said while he worked for two years as a machine operator compacting trash at the Wasco County Landfill, “Throughout the entire employment I had there, they were doing just enough to stay out of trouble, but they didn’t really care, and they want to do it the easiest and cheapest way possible.”

Another former landfill employee who asked not to be named told Columbia Gorge News that during their four and a half years working as a scale house attendant, the landfill office received phone calls on a consistent basis from residents concerned about out-of-town hauler driving. The former employee stated they frequently answered these phone calls.

“Usually someone in the office calls out to tell us to tell the drivers to slow down,” they said.

Columbia Gorge News reached out to Portland Metro for comment about the traffic safety concerns involving haulers transporting Metro’s solid waste.

“We have not been notified about this issue,” Portland Metro Public Information Officer Gia Ballash said. “We have a contract with them that allows them to take waste from the region, but we’re not able to enforce traffic requirements, and it does ultimately fall to the local jurisdiction.”

In a later email statement, Ballash said while Portland Metro’s authorization of the Wasco County Landfill is limited to the landfill site, “we take community concerns seriously.”

Columbia Gorge News asked Ballash how Metro plans to verify that the landfill is holding long-haul drivers accountable for safe driving.

She replied: “Metro has reached out to partners at the state and county level and trusts that they will respond to the community’s concerns accordingly. Additionally, Metro contacted Wasco County Landfill and received confirmation that the landfill issued a traffic safety memo earlier this year to the companies that transport waste to its facility.”

Columbia Gorge News obtained this memo written by Wasco County Landfill’s Assistant District Manager Jeremy Fink, which notes “frightening concerns” brought to the landfill’s attention by neighbors, law enforcement and a commissioner.

The memo lists many of the concerns described by residents: Speeding, cutting corners, near-miss collisions, erratic driving and littering.

“We are by no means calling anybody out,” wrote Fink. “I know all of you set high expectations for your employees as do we. We are asking if you would [be] open to speaking with your driver[s] and express our concerns.”

In an email exchange with Portland Metro obtained by Columbia Gorge News, Fink explained, “We have sent similar emails out in the past and reminders out every so often just to help keep safety fresh in their minds.”

Keever said sometimes after she speaks out driver behavior seems to improve, but only temporarily.

“She’s responsive,” Keever said about the landfill manager, Nancy Mitchell. “She tries to talk to the drivers, but the problem is, I can tell her all these things, but it doesn’t slow down the traffic.”

Columbia Gorge News reached out to the following trucking companies which residents have observed driving to and from the landfill and asked about their awareness of the safety concerns, and to explain their safety enforcement methods:

• Dietrich Trucking

• Marston Trucking

• Rose City Transportation

• K&E Excavating

• VCT Trucking

• Walsh Trucking

Of these companies, only Dietrich Trucking returned a phone call, but declined to comment. The others did not respond to calls or emails.

Most truck drivers have an incentive to complete their routes quickly. According to the American Trucking Association, the majority of long-haul drivers are paid by the mile, averaging 500 miles per day.

Along with farm workers and restaurant workers, they are among the few workers in America exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act, meaning employers are not legally required to pay overtime.

According to Chief Deputy Williams, law enforcement is ultimately responsible for holding truck drivers accountable, but he noted it’s difficult to maintain a presence near the landfill with two to four deputies covering a county of 2,500 square miles.

“The other part is, when we’re out there patrolling, all the trucks have CB radios, and it takes one patrol car to drive through there and they all know. So the problem never occurs with us there,” he told Columbia Gorge News.

Williams said the Wasco County Sheriff’s Office has communicated about the truck traffic concerns with Oregon State Police. OSP troopers regularly patrol Highway 197 where it intersects with Five Mile, but the few places a trooper can park are highly visible.

“If people are driving dangerously or running you off the road, or anything to that level, call us,” Williams said.

ODOT says accident data doesn’t support safety improvement programs

Safety improvements on Oregon’s state highways are prioritized by how many serious or fatal accidents occur, making the roads leading to the landfill a lower priority.

“Our list is long and we continue to use our safety funds to address the top priorities, placing this improvement behind many others in the region,” Oregon Department of Transportation’s District 4 Public Information Officer Kacey Davey said in an email.

According to ODOT, the intersection, including one mile in each direction, only one serious crash was reported in 2018, making the stretch of highway ineligible for a safety corridor or a federal Highway Safety Improvement Program.

ODOT’s Crash Analysis and Reporting online tool shows 16 non-motorcycle crashes since 2013 reported by law enforcement on Five Mile, Steele Road, and the one mile stretches north and south of Highway 197 at Five Mile junction, areas residents identified where they had negative encounters with out-of-town haulers. Of these crashes, only five included data about semi-truck involvement.

“We have installed advanced intersection warning signs (with street names) on each highway approach to Five Mile Road; these are a recognized safety improvement to increase driver awareness of the intersection,” she said. “Beyond that, this specific intersection does not have a simple fix.”

At the roadside gathering of officials at the end of June, Quinton recalled that ODOT staff didn’t believe a turn lane was an option for Highway 197.

“They just don’t have the clearance on each side,” Quinton said, “but that’s also something they would consider in their initial project scoping.”

According to Quinton, Rep. Smith is considering advocating for funding for this intersection through the 2025 legislative transportation package. The transportation committee plans to hold a roadshow in The Dalles on Friday, Sept. 13, offering an opportunity for legislators to receive public input and possibly consider the intersection in this legislation.

For more information about the Joint Transportation Committee’s roadshow, visit the League of Oregon Cities website, www.orcities.org.

According to filings with the Oregon Secretary of State, Rep. Smith has received multiple campaign donations from Oregon Refuse and Recycling PAC and Oregon Truck PAC ranging from $500 to $2,500.

At the meeting with officials circled up on the side of Highway 197, Quinton said he watched a passenger truck narrowly miss a collision.

“In the hour that we were there, 20 or more trucks pulled out and then in, and countless cars,” he said. “These people are flying through there.”

No official date has been scheduled, but a follow-up meeting between Rep. Smith, ODOT, Wasco County and the Dufur School District is expected to take place at the end of August before school starts on Sept. 3. Smith’s office invited Columbia Gorge News to attend this meeting.

“Sure, progress isn’t being made to the degree people would like, but I feel like the ball is rolling on it and we have at least some momentum on finding a solution,” Quinton said.

To residents like Fargher, the need for change is now.

“I have a son who’s 15 and he just got his permit,” she said. “I am terrified for him to even practice driving on Five Mile to go to the highway, terrified, and he’s gonna have to drive that way to school every day.”

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Aileen Hymas is a freelance reporter covering city and county government in Wasco County. Contact Aileen at aileenhymas@gmail.com.