Industrial landfill asks for increased operating hours

Talk about it

It took eight months of intense debate, three council votes and more than 20 different conditions before a new industrial landfill was approved for Cloquet’s Antus Addition in February 2011.

Since then, Shamrock Environmental Landfill has opened (last fall) and changed owners (from DemCon Companies to SKB Environmental), all with little fanfare.

Now the landfill owners are asking for an amendment to the conditional use permit approved last year. The company is proposing to modify the operating hours to allow the industrial landfill to accept waste 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The current permit set the normal operating hours for waste acceptance at the landfill from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays.

A public hearing on the conditional use permit amendment request will be conducted by the Cloquet Planning Commission at its 7 p.m. meeting Tuesday, June 26, at the Cloquet City Hall, 1307 Cloquet Ave. Citizens are invited to comment during the public hearing portion of the meeting or in writing prior to the hearing.

Cloquet City Planner Al Cottingham said the request comes because the landfill would like to accept waste from a company out of Duluth that requires the extended hours.

John Domke, vice president of SKB Environmental, said it’s a matter of providing service to customers who can’t store waste until the landfill’s restricted opening hours.

“This is not a problem we’ve ever encountered here [at the company’s other landfills],” Domke said. “These are local industries who currently take their waste to different landfills that are open 24/7.”

Domke said it would really be a matter of trucks coming in to the landfill site near Cloquet’s Hilltop soccer fields and disposing of waste, there should be little to no additional noise to bother any neighbors.

“We would try to avoid running any equipment, if possible,” he said. “And there would be a certified operator there at all times so there would be no chance of anything getting disposed of that isn’t OK.”

Tags: carlton county, news, cloquet