Regulators Intend to Deny Class V Permit for Landfill in Utah

The site of the Promontory Point Resources (PPR) landfill is located just a few hundred yards from the Great Salt Lake in Utah. The owners of the PPR landfill presented plans to upgrade the site to a Class V landfill almost seven years ago. Based on these plans, the landfill would have started accepting contaminated soils and coal ash from across the U.S. The owners submitted an application in 2020 for the reclassification of the site as a Class V landfill, stating their intent to accept municipal waste from southern Idaho and northern Utah.

This week, the director of the Division of Waste Management and Radiation Control made public his plans to reject the requested Class V permit for the landfill.

The basis of this decision is that there is enough capacity at existing landfills within the wasteshed of the PPR landfill to meet the state’s current—and future—needs. The location of the landfill near the Great Salt Lake has also raised concerns about risks to the ecosystem. Environmental advocates and scientists have warned that landfill leachate would harm the lake’s ecosystem, and debris from the landfill could spell disaster for nearby brine shrimp harvesting industries as well as migrating birds, according to the Salt Lake Tribune’s coverage of the story.

Timothy Hawkes, general counsel for the Great Salt Lake Brine Shrimp Cooperative, is quoted in the article, saying: “We don’t want to be a dumping ground for other states’ waste, particularly when we have resources like the Great Salt Lake that are more sensitive than people might think to disturbances like that.”

The public is welcome to comment on the pending decision over the next 45 days, and a hearing will be held on March 27 by the Utah Department of Environmental Quality.