BILLINGS – The Billings Regional Landfill, the largest in Montana, is planning a new project, a transfer facility.
Over the span of about 18 months, the building will undergo construction. Once completed, it will be 150 feet deep and 300 feet wide. The landfill currently spans more than 800 acres, 200 of which are permitted to receive waste.
People will be able to drop off their trash, and landfill employees will then crush it, compact it, and then take it up the hill and then bury it.
“It’s a significant structure. It’s about $21 million to build(those) scales, and we are also building a machine shop which would bring our equipment in and work on that,” said Dave Mumford, Billings public works director. “It will also reduce significantly in the amount of blowing debris that occurs. A lot of the debris we get, especially with the little plastic garbage bags we get at the dump. If people don’t have them in trash bags, it blows all over the place and creates quite a mess and a lot of work for us to clean up.”
The landfill receives over 225,000 tons of garbage per year from five counties in the surrounding area.
Mumford says it will also keep everybody from driving into the landfill.
Additionally, the landfill will be adding more scales to help make the drop off faster and more efficient.
Mumford also says the landfill wants to get more involved with recycling, “A lot of good construction materials are brought to the landfill if we can separate them out on the public and also groups like Habitat for Humanity can get that material and help build houses less expensively.”
Construction is set to start for the transfer facility in the next couple of months.
