This week the Metro Council will consider a proposal to update and expand the region’s community enhancement grants program that, for more than 25 years, has re-invested millions of dollars into local improvement projects in neighborhoods affected by garbage disposal facilities.
Metro's program started in 1988 after the Oregon Legislature allowed the assessment of fees to support communities hosting facilities that accept garbage and other waste discarded from homes and businesses. While offering value to the region as a whole, these facilities generate traffic, odors and other inconveniences to residents in adjacent communities.
At its inception, Metro's program involved collection of a 50-cent fee on every ton of garbage delivered to the St. Johns Landfill in North Portland, which has since closed. In the early 1990s, the program expanded to include the collection of fees at Metro’s two publicly owned transfer stations in Northwest Portland and Oregon City as well as at a privately-owned garbage facility in Forest Grove. In the last five years, more than $1.5 million has been collected for reinvestment in projects such as Newell Creek and downtown enhancements in Oregon City, solar powered trash compactors and public art in Forest Grove, and the North Portland Greenway Trail, among others.
The region’s solid waste system has changed a lot since 1990, and the community enhancement program has not kept pace with those changes or with inflation. Today there are six solid waste transfer stations in the region, but three of them do not charge solid waste enhancement fees. Additionally, there are new facilities that propose to receive and process food waste collected from homes and businesses, and those facilities have impacts on nearby neighborhoods. And 50 cents today doesn’t buy as much as it did in 1990. If the fee had kept pace with inflation, it would be up to 98 cents per ton now.
If adopted, the proposal would increase the fee to one dollar per ton (the most allowed under Oregon law). In addition to the two Metro transfer stations and the Forest Grove transfer station that already collect a community enhancement fee, monies would be collected at:
- Pride Recycling transfer station in Sherwood
- Willamette Resources, Inc. transfer station in Wilsonville, owned and operated by Republic Services
- Troutdale Transfer Station, owned and operated by Waste Management
- Suttle Road Recovery facility in North Portland, owned and operated by Recology
- The proposed Columbia Biogas facility in Northeast Portland, which proposes to process food waste into energy but has not yet been built.
If adopted by the Metro Council, these changes would take effect next July 1.
Those who are interested in learning more about the proposed changes to the community enhancement program can find more detail in the staff report (see ordinance number 14-1344). Anyone who wishes to provide public testimony on this proposal may testify at the Metro Council meeting that begins at 2 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 30, at Metro Regional Center.