The impending closure of Lacy Lakeview’s filling landfill and general growth in the area loom over the city of Waco’s anticipated closure date of its current site at 1624 Hannah Hill Road.
The site accepted 360,000 tons of waste over the past year and is predicted to close between July and November of 2025, Solid Waste Director Kody Petillo said during a presentation to the city council Tuesday. Waco is in the process of developing a new landfill near Highway 31 and TK Parkway, outside Axtell, in hopes of opening it to the public by May 2025.
From 2018 to 2020 the landfill’s incoming tonnage was fairly consistent with an average of about 301,000 tons. Then, from 2020 to 2021 there was a 7% increase and from 2021 to 2022 an 18% increase, taking in 369,000 tons in 2022, Petillo said.
The growth of the Central Texas region is a contributing factor. With more people comes more waste, he said.
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The Lacy Lakeview landfill, under Municipal Solid Waste Permit 1646A, is also diverting waste as it expects to reach its fill point even sooner than Waco’s anticipated July 2025 date. Petillo said it has been limiting the number of customers who can use the facility, leading more people to Waco’s landfill, but the site is engaged in a process of permit expansion.
The Lacy Lakeview location saw a 24% increase in tonnage from 2019 to 2020 and a 10% increase from 2020 to 2021, according to Texas Commission on Environmental Quality reports.
“So we are seeing some of the customers that historically went to that site are starting to come to our site over the last couple of years,” Petillo said.
The proportion of waste entering Waco’s landfill from franchise haulers like Republic Services and Waste Management has decreased since 2018, while the proportion of self-haulers, cash customers and construction companies that are hauling their own waste has increased. The proportion of city of Waco collections in the overall load has stayed about the same.
Self-reported data shows there has been a rise in customers from some other cities and counties, notably a 200% increase in usage from Axtell, Bellmead, Hill County, Limestone County and many other rural communities.
“From 2021 to 2023 we had quite a few communities have over a 200% increase in usage at our landfill and most of that we attribute to Lacy Lakeview reducing their level of service or the amount of customers that can utilize that facility,” he said.
Petillo said the Waco landfill’s service area, which covers Lampasas, Milam and Robertson counties and all counties bordering McLennan County, could potentially grow at the new landfill.
Municipal solid waste by far accounts for the most tonnage entering the landfill each year, but construction and demolition waste has increased steadily over the last few years, he said. Construction and demolition materials, including steel, wood, drywall, brick, concrete and asphalt, do not compact or densify as much as organic materials do and take up more airspace than typical municipal waste, Petillo said.
“We’ve changed rates to try to encourage people to go elsewhere, as well as provided some education to try to get some waste diverted,” he said. “Our C&D is still increasing, but at the end of the day we’d rather see it in our landfill than in creeks or in vacant lots.”
The city’s most recent twice-yearly airspace analysis of the landfill’s remaining capacity shows the compaction rate increased over the last six-month period, pushing the anticipated fill date from July 2025 to November 2025. However, Petillo said the landfill has had some compactor issues in recent months, and he expects the compaction rate to come back down in the next report, leaving July 2025 as a more reliable date.
The city has received all permits necessary to begin construction on the new landfill, with the most recent $4.75 million settlement with Limestone County bookending a long battle with opponents of the new landfill.
The last of the 10 petitions opposing Waco’s plan for a landfill off TK Parkway have been settled, bringing the grand total to more than $1 million in lump sums to neighbors of the site. The settlements pave a speedy path forward to the site’s permitting, as the city strives to have a new landfill open before the old one reaches its fill point.
Petillo said the critical path forward now is to install a culvert and entrance road at the Horse Creek crossing that would allow heavy equipment to cross and start excavation for the new landfill’s first waste-accepting sector.
He said the department has already opened bids for the culvert project and hopes to award a contract at a city council meeting Oct. 17. It will be critical to issue bids for the sector-one excavation and construction project at a strategic time to ensure a contractor is not waiting on the culvert to begin excavation, Petillo said.
The current timeline allows the new landfill to be open to the general public in May of 2025, slightly later than Petillo proposed at a council meeting in April.
The city has obtained a development permit modification for its proposed transfer station at an old landfill site, which allows the start of construction for the station, Petillo said. It still needs transfer station registration, which will be prepared by SCS Engineers. The registration will allow Waco to open and operate the station, he said.
Design is in progress for the station and should wrap up next month, with bids going out in November and construction potentially stretching throughout 2024. The transfer station could begin accepting waste in January 2025.
At the current landfill there are a few sustainability projects in the works for when it closes, including finding a beneficial use for landfill gas and a possible solar farm on top of a closed landfill.
The city has partnered again with SCS Engineers for a feasibility study into beneficial use of landfill gas, with a focus on power generation at a city-owned facility, rather than a partnership with a third-party user, Petillo said. However, he said the results of the study “weren’t great,” and the city has had interest from private developers that could make use of gas created from the decomposition of organic materials and the site’s existing methane infrastructure.
“So we’re at a spot where we think it’s a really good opportunity with where we are with the development with our disposal facilities to go out with a request for proposals … for a landfill gas beneficial use project pretty broad in nature and let that industry come back and tell us what’s the best value for the city of Waco,” Petillo said.
The city council awarded a $124,000 professional services contract to Jones Lang LaSalle Americas Inc., for a solar utility feasibility study. The city issued a request for qualifications in April, opened bids in June and awarded the contract Tuesday.
“We had quite a few proposals and they were all really good,” Petillo said. “As we went through the scoring system we felt that Jones Lang LaSalle … were the most qualified to give us the best product moving forward. So we’re excited to see where that project goes and how it can fit in potentially with a landfill gas beneficial use project.”
The study will look at three closed landfill sites: the current MSW 948A; MSW 1419 at the intersection of University Parks Drive and County Road 131-A; and MSW 1039 at University Parks Drive and Tinsley Road, the site of the potential transfer station, according to council packet documents.
