By Gail Binkly

Come Feb. 1, the cost of being wasteful is going up.

The Montezuma County commissioners on Monday approved 2-0 a new fee schedule at the county landfill that will raise the cost of disposal of municipal solid waste from $20 a ton to $24.

Municipal solid waste includes household trash and trash from motels, jails, schools, offices and stores, explained Deb Barton, landfill manager. Paper, cans, glass, and packages of all sorts are common types of such waste.

The fee change for municipal solid waste will affect "about 90 to 95 percent of the waste that comes in here," Barton said, as it will apply to the garbage hauled in by the city of Cortez and Waste Management.

However, there is a discounted rate of $20 per ton for clean yard waste and clean construction and demolition waste. Such loads cannot contain paper, cardboard, plastic bags or household trash. Yard wastes may be only leaves, grass clippings, small branches and garden waste, while the C&D loads can be only such debris as treated wood/lumber, asphalt shingles, concrete, bricks, rocks and dirt.

Those loads will be diverted to separate locations at the landfill. The yard wastes will be composted, Barton said.

"I want to pull the big bulky construction debris out if I can," she said. "We want to do the yard waste off to one side because that’s where a lot of liquid will come from."

In addition, landfill operators are trying to reclaim and recycle any metals that come in, she said.

Most of the other fees will not change under the new rate structure. The cost for bringing in a load equal to or less than 700 pounds will remain at $7. Disposal of appliances will continue to cost $10.50 per appliance, and the animal-carcass-disposal fees will stay the same ($2.50 per small animal, $12.50 per large animal).

Likewise, the charges for tire disposal ($5 for each automobile tire, $10 for a truck tire and $15 per equipment tire) will hold steady.

Barton said the tire charges are deliberately kept high because the landfill does not want many tires.

"We’re trying to discourage them from being put in a landfill hole because tires create a problem 30 years from now," she said. "They tend to hold gases and that will cause them to rise and break through the surface. We don’t really want whole tires."

The new rate structure includes a number of newly created fees, including a $10 charge for any loads coming on site after 4 p.m., the landfill’s normal closing time, or unloading past 4:15 p.m., and a $50 fee for illegal dumping at the landfill gate after hours (that is in addition to regular rates plus costs for cleanup).

Barton said the new fee schedule more accurately reflects the actual costs of operating the landfill and its state-of-the-art baler, which has been in place for about three years.

"When the rates were first established, it was based on the best estimate at the time because no one had ever done one (a baler-based landfill) in the state of Colorado," Barton said. "So we had no one to go to as a mentor. We’re leading the state, which is kind of nice.

"Since then, as we have developed experience looking at the costs involved, we’ve adjusted the rates."

The intent, she said, is for the landfill to be funded by user fees, not taxpayer subsidies.