listed the top five problems that the landfill causes:
1.“From time to time, it stinks to high heaven.”
2.“It leaches into the Yamhill River.”
3.“It leaches into people’s drinking water.”
4.“It’s an eyesore.”
5.“It’s noisy – the noise from the machines running around the top carries up into the valleys.”
“We succeeded because people in Oregon really care about farmland, and the struggle around this landfill has been that they want to cover high-value farmland,” Perse said. “Farmers here are outraged that high-quality farmland with irrigation rights could be covered with garbage. So we were able to convince farmers that if they didn’t step up to the plate and express their outrage, they were going to get walked over.
“The business people understand the implications,” she added. “We’re trying to start a destination area for people to come enjoy the scenery, the food, the beautiful little town, and, if they drive in from the coast, they drive right by a mountain of garbage that is often being worked on with lots of heavy equipment and is often rather smelly.”
Perse admits that some of the old-line businesses that had been in the area for decades were reluctant to join in at first. She said that all changed when the director of the International Pinot Noir Celebration, which brings thousands of wine connoisseurs to the area each summer, threatened to move the event to another area if the odor from the landfill ever interrupted one of their tastings.
“Lo and behold,” said Perse, “the mayor signed a letter written by the city attorney and the city council, saying they were tired of being on the edge of a landfill, and did not see the expansion of a landfill being in the best interest of the economic vitality of the region. That was something we could parlay into getting people to join us. It was safe. We could say, ‘Even the city of McMinnville is against it.’”
“Most people who live in McMinnville think that the landfill is a huge mistake,” said Langenwalter. “But this is the cheapest place for the Portland Metro area [to dispose of their garbage], and Waste Management is now paying, I think, $750,000 a year to Yamhill County for the privilege of causing an environmental disaster. But there’s 100,000 people living in Yamhill County, so it’s only $7.50 per person, per year. If I were to ask the taxpayers, ‘Would you pay $7.50 a year to quit ruining the environment?’ a whole lot of them would say, ‘Yes.’”