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Revamping of county’s solid waste ordinance will require more time and more money
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By Charlie Warner
Argus News Editor
Updating the current solid waste ordinance for Houston County appears to be a more complex and time consuming endeavor than originally anticipated. That’s basically what Solid Waste Officer Rick Frank told the Houston County Board Sept. 29.
The county board approved hiring solid waste legal expert Kevin Johnson of Stoel-Rives LLP of Minneapolis earlier this year to help updating the county’s ordinance, which is nearly 20 years old. Frank and Johnson felt the project could be completed sometime this year. Consulting costs were originally estimated at under $10,000. The board set a cap of $10,000 for Johnson’s work.
At the Sept. 29 board meeting, Frank reported that the original plans to have the new ordinance completed by Jan. 1, 2010 was a little too ambitious.
“A more realistic time frame is to have this completed by this next summer,” Frank said.
To date, the county has been billed approximately $6,300 for Johnson’s work. Frank said it could require another $10,000 to $15,000 to complete the project.
“This is going to cost more than we thought because of a number of unexpected issues,” Frank said. “A lot of footwork has been done. But we need to lay everything out for all the cities that we deal with. And we need to have this ordinance written up so the contracts we approve with all the haulers are correct. We don’t want to be penny wise and pound foolish. It’s not going to do us any good to rush this.”
Frank continued that when the ordinance was written up in the early 1990s, a flow control stipulation was included. Since then, the courts system has ruled flow controls to be illegal.
A motion was made by Commissioner Jack Miller and seconded by Commissioner Dave Corcoran to increase the cap for Johnson’s services to $17,500. The motion was unanimously approved.
Solid waste market price set
After reviewing the costs involved in transporting solid wastes from Houston County to seven different landfills, the county board declared a market price of $58.50 per ton based on a tipping fee amount of $39 per ton at the Monroe County landfill near Sparta, Wis.
Frank presented a detailed listing of the seven landfills, what each tipping fee per ton was and figured in the cost of transporting the solid waste from Houston County to each site.
The total market price per ton for each of the seven landfills (from cheapest to most expensive) were:
•Monroe County- $58.50
•La Crosse County- $73.50
•Winneshiek County- $75
•Lake Mills, Iowa- $75.95
•Wisconsin Rapids- $92.05
•Austin, Minn.- $97.80
•Olmsted County- $116
Minnesota statue requires that the county set a solid waste market price each year.
You can contact Charlie Warner at
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