In the midst of the spruce bark beetle outbreak on the Kenai Peninsula, there’s an excess of woody debris left over on residential properties. That slash has to go somewhere, but the Central Peninsula Landfill is quickly running out of space. That’s partly why, in early July, the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly set aside funds to create privately operated sites for spruce debris to ease the burden on the landfill.
The borough said the temporary sites would be located in Kasilof, Nikiski, Cooper Landing and Sterling, with the hopes of bringing new disposal sites closer to those who live in rural communities. The borough is still in the process of deciding exactly where those sites will be.
Lee Frey, the solid waste director for the borough, said most of the brush from peoples' homes on the central peninsula is ending up at the Soldotna landfill, causing concerns about future storage issues as the landfill runs out of room for the material. On top of that, he said, when the brush is burned, the smoke causes a nuisance at nearby homes and schools.
The landfill’s location at the edge of the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge also raises concerns.
“Due to our proximity to the refuge on the backside of the landfill, we’ve been fairly concerned about having our burn operations there to dispose of all the brush,” Frey said.
He said on top of the public issues created by the slash dumping at the landfill, it also generates extra costs for what’s already one of the borough’s most expensive operations.
Earlier this month, the borough assembly voted to allocate $300,000 to get slash sites up and running. The plan is to seek out contracts with private property owners to designate sites on their land. The borough will set expectations for operational hours and what the sites have to receive.
The site selection is still in process. Borough Land Management Officer Marcus Mueller explained in a July 5 finance committee meeting that the borough would likely reach out to gravel pit owners, who he said are in a good position to host slash sites on their properties.
The material collected at the sites would become the property of the private site operators. They would have full discretion over how to handle, sell, harvest or dispose of the material.
“They could set up to burn, which tends to be the cheapest, most economical way to just get rid of volume,” Mueller said. “Or they could process it into chips, compost, biochar, firewood — any of those values that they might go after.”
Mueller clarified in the finance committee meeting that burning at the slash sites would be governed by the state’s fire regulations and could not occur during a burn ban period. He explained that for borough-run sites, burns are conducted in September and October when fire risk is lower.
Frey is looking forward to the impact of those new sites on the overloaded borough landfill.
“I would hope just for a general volume reduction so that we have less to handle at our site. You know, any time we can keep traffic volume down and reduce safety incidents is always a good thing,” he said.
There are currently two government-run sites already in operation — one managed by the City of Kenai just off the Kenai Spur Highway north of the center of town for which the city allocated $50,000, and one in Cooper Landing that, according to Frey, is extremely overburdened. Some of the funds allocated by the borough will go toward management of that Cooper Landing site.
