Costs set to rise due to landfill closure

Consequences of the closure of the municipal landfill are beginning to be felt and are following the long-held predictions of Moorcroft Mayor Ben Glenn, former mayor Dick Claar and many others who dreaded the inevitable rise in costs under the auspices of outside facilitators.

“We’re trucking to Gillette now so I think we have to look at our commercial rates,” Glenn reported at the last council meeting. “For years they have been too low, but we got away with it because our landfill [rates] was at $60 a ton. We are now paying $80 a ton at Gillette so our commercial garbage rates are putting us in the red.”

He reminded his colleagues that they had already discussed this eventuality at the last two budget sessions, “But everything was so up in the air with our landfill at that point we didn’t know what we were going to have to do to make it work.”

The mayor suggested the council examine the situation and return with recommendations.

“We need to have that answered on [September] 12, I believe,” he said.

“Right now,” he added, “it looks like the residential can rate is almost a break-even, we’re still above just a little bit, but we’ll have to look at that rate as well… We can’t turn a blind eye.”