Landfill seeks expansion at east Rosemount site

Talk about it

The view from County Road 42 could change in the next several years if SKB Environmental gets city approval to expand its landfill in east Rosemount.

SKB has asked the city of Rosemount for permission to add 39 acres of waste storage to its facility, increasing the operation to 151 acres. That would bring the landfill to about 27 million cubic yards of waste by the time everything is full and would add about 40 feet to the finished height of the landfill. It would also flatten the top of the finished landfill, transforming it from a pyramid to a largely flat surface about 70 acres on top.

SKB vice president John Domke said the expansion should have very little impact beyond the fence that surrounds the landfill. The facility is mostly invisible to passing cars. From County Road 42, where it is most visible, the effect would be an extension and raising of what appears from the outside to be a large, grassy bluff.

“Even from 42 it’s very little difference,” Domke said.

The SKB landfill was last expanded in 2003 to add a cell for construction and demolition waste. The land identified for the current expansion is zoned for waste management.

“If we don’t build the expansion it would be land that couldn’t be used for anything else,” SKB president Rick O’Gara said.

The Rosemount Planning Commission held a public hearing July 22 to discuss the addition but only a few residents attended.

The immediate impact would be even smaller. Domke and O’Gara don’t expect to make use of the expansion for several years. He expects the addition to add approximately 10 years to the life of the facility — giving SKB about 20 years before it is filled. But before anything can be disposed of on the land targeted for the addition SKB will have to move two power poles and create a wetland area twice the size of one that would be covered by the landfill.

Any new wetland created would have to be of higher quality than the area that would be filled in, and the city would have to sign off on it before any of the existing wetland is filled in.

Domke said SKB will need the expansion if it hopes to keep accepting waste.

“There’s a need in the region,” he said. “We take the ash from Hennepin County. The way the regional system is based, we see a need coming up.”

If SKB gets permission to expand it’s probably the last time the facility would grow. The added space would more or less fill SKB’s current facility and neither Domke nor O’Gara expect SKB to look beyond its current property line.

“I don’t see where we could expand it any further,” O’Gara said.

Tags: news, landfill, expansion