Waste management is as simple as dropping a garbage bag in the can and rolling it out to the curb for its respective pickup day, right? For most people, that is where waste management ends, but for others like Mike Story, town manager for McLean, Texas, that involves a great deal more work. Landfills have life expectancies and become too full to continue using. The process of opening a new landfill is costly and complicated. McLean looks to open their new one in a month or so.

Story has been city manager for 11 years in a town reminiscent of the movie “Cars,” with roughly 660 residents. The town declined in the 1980s with the building of Interstate 40, which replaced the need for travel on U.S. Route 66. However, the town has the potential to grow with new business investors eyeing the area. With new residents comes increased waste products, however.

Story noted that the town is currently in its fifth year in the process of opening a new landfill. “I went to the city council six years before we ran out of space” in the current one, he stated. The old landfill only has a small amount of space remaining, and that space is set aside solely for emergency use. Like some other small cities, McLean uses its own two garbage trucks and presently hauls its waste products to landfills in a nearby town at the cost of around $5,000 per month.

Unfortunately, the pandemic hit around the same time that he pointed out the need for a new landfill, which slowed the process further, yet other roadblocks stood in the way. A parcel of land was chosen, but with pushback against it, the city bought a different, 131-acre property half a mile from the old landfill. Then the paper trail began.

Working with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Story brought in geologists and paleontologists to test the soil and ensure that it was not a potential archeological dig site. As the finishing measures are put into place, the last step will be the final inspection by a local TCEQ representative. Story hopes to have that completed in the next two or three months.

“I try to do my best to make sure we’re following everything by the book,” he continued. “It’s a lot of time, a lot of planning. This new landfill should last us between 75-80 years.”

Under Texas regulations, the new landfill will be allowed to accept more than the typical household waste. Construction demolition debris and certain appliances like washers and dryers can be taken to the new landfill. However, it cannot accept medical waste nor automobile tires, which tend to float to the surface even after burial. But Story explained that the nearby town of Shamrock is slated to open a tire-shredding facility soon.

The new landfill would benefit not just McLean. “I’ve already been contacted by a couple of other small towns,” Story said. These towns could resume their own trash collection if they were able to dump this waste into McLean’s new landfill. “Us little towns, we have to scratch each other’s back because money’s tight … we help each other out.”

This could bring additional revenue into McLean as well, though it wouldn’t be a long-term solution for these small towns. Story expressed interest in signing five-year contracts that charged by the cubic yard, eventually funding certified truck scales to weigh and charge for the trash going into the landfill.

Three workers at minimum are needed to run a landfill – a gatekeeper, a worker to bury the trash and another to police blown trash, he pointed out. At the new site, the city will be able to dig 20 feet deep, 60 feet wide and 120 feet long. “If you’ve got a landfill, you’re doing good for a little town.”

Residents of McLean are eager for their new landfill to open, as many of them look forward to spring cleanup of houses and yards. And Story was an excellent person to lead the project. In addition to his time as city manager, he had spent much of his career in contracting, waste management and other municipal functions in other cities. Years ago, he urged the McLean city council not to contract their garbage collection to an outside company, demonstrating that the city would save thousands by handling the task themselves. “I have to be a good steward of the taxpayers’ money. That’s part of my job.”

Most of what his job consists of when opening a new landfill is paperwork. There are government tests and regulations that must be followed, and engineers who lay out the framework for the new site, with barrier markers put into place. Once the new landfill opens, the old one will be closed, meaning more paperwork for the longtime city manager.

Story takes it in stride, knowing that all the manhours he puts into his work are an investment in the small town and its people. When the day comes that he chooses to retire, he won’t sit still. Perhaps he will begin a consulting company, advising other towns in the process of opening their own landfills. “I like to help people,” Story concluded.

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