the Region 2000 Services Authority landfill in Campbell County is projected to accept waste until 2029
Source: Region 2000 Services Authority, Landfill Master Plan - Livestock Road Facility
the Region 2000 Services Authority landfill in Campbell County is projected to accept waste until 2029
Source: Region 2000 Services Authority, Landfill Master Plan - Livestock Road Facility
Most local jurisdictions that still operate landfills have combined with neighbors to share costs and provide an adequate amount of waste to pay for operations, expansion, and closure that will meet Department of Environmental Quality regulations.
The Region 2000 Regional Commission identified in 2002 the benefits for several jurisdictions to create a regional landfill, compared to creating a network of waste transfer stations to ship waste to a facility in a different jurisdiction or to build a regional waste-to-energy incinerator. Though Nelson County was not part of Region 2000, it joined in the study. It had only a trash transfer station, and no landfill.
At the time, there were six operating landfills in the Regional 2000 Regional Commission jurisdictions - the counties of Amherst, Bedford, Campbell, Appomattox, and the cities of Lynchburg and Bedford.1
Bedford County, with its own landfill, declined to join the project. Amherst County also decided to keep operating its own separate landfill, with access limited to just county customers:2
the Amherst County landfill accepts municipal solid waste only from Amherst County residents and businesses
Source: ESRI, ArcGIS Online
Campbell County, Appomattox County, the City of Lynchburg, the City of Bedford, and Nelson County partnered to create the Region 2000 Services Authority in 2008. The City of Bedford agreed to alter operations at its landfill, and accept only construction and demolition debris. Lynchburg and Campbell County agreed to transfer their landfills to the new regional authority.
The four jurisdictions sent their municipal solid waste to the City of Lynchburg landfill initially, and most operations were suspended at the Campbell County landfill. When the Lynchburg landfill was completely filled, it was closed according to Department of Environmental Quality regulations. When the City of Bedford reverted to town status in 2013, it withdrew and began using the Bedford County landfill.
the Lynchburg landfill has been closed and serves now as the Concord Turnpike Convenience Center
Source: ESRI, ArcGIS Online
The landfill in Campbell County was re-opened. In 2015, the Region 2000 Services Authority got approval to expand the landfill.
Without expansion, capacity would have been exhausted in 2022. Opening a new facility was not expected to be feasible until 2025. A short-term measure was a lateral expansion of the existing landfill, adding six more acres of capacity within the existing footprint. Neighbors objected to continued exposure to odor in particular. The Region 2000 Services Authority started to extract and burn methane from the landfill and altered the pH of sludge deposited from the Lynchburg Wastewater Plant.
The lateral expansion in 2015 provided capacity until 2030. The Region 2000 Services Authority recognized it needed to start planning for a replacement landfill, to avoid repeating the pressures in 2015 to act quickly because there was no time for alternatives to the lateral expansion.3In 2018, the Region 2000 Services Authority determined that the most most-effective solution for managing municipal solid waste for its member jurisdictions beyond 2030 was to expand the landfill. Plans to acquire property adjacent to the facility and build new cells were blocked when Campbell County supervisors rejected the proposal. That left the regional authority with the option of building transfer stations and shipping solid waste to other landfills.
Campbell County supervisors blocked expansion of the landfill used by the Region 2000 Services Authority beyond the lateral extension in 2018, threatening closure of the facility in 2030
Source: Region 2000 Services Authority, Landfill Master Plan - Livestock Road Facility
Appomattox County started that transition in 2020, even though it remained a member of the Region 2000 Services Authority. The county authorized a waste transfer station and contracted for trash removal with the company proposing the Green Ridge Recycling and Disposal Facility. Amherst County also explored whether to add a cell to its landfill and keep it in business for another 30 years, or export its waste. Bedford County was forced to switch to trash transfer stations and shipping waste to landfills outside the county, after an engineering miscalculation required it to close the county landfill five years earlier than planned.
Tipping fees for disposal at the existing, centrally-located municipal landfills were less expensive than costs for transporting trash to mega-landfills in the region. Transfer was attractive because the long-term costs to operate landfills might end up more expensive for the counties and cities, financial risk could be transferred away from municipal jurisdictions, and the political risk of opening a dump" near a community of voters could be avoided.4
As the potential for the Region 2000 Services Authority to stop collecting trash in 2030 became clear, the members fought over the existing funding formula. Commercial trash haulers paid an extra $10/ton to dump their waste at the landfill, and until 2019 the additional funding was distributed to Lynchburg and Campbell County. That funding was treated as compensation for the "airspace" used in the landfills built by the two jurisdictions. In 1019, Appomattox and Nelson counties refused to allocate that funding, arguing that Lynchburg and Campbell County had already been adequately compensated.
By 2020, the authority had stockpiled an extra $2.5 million, and the four members agreed to a lawsuit in which the Region 2000 Services Authority would take no official position. They decided to allow a state judge to determine how to interpret the term "excess revenue" in the agreement that created the Region 2000 Services Authority.5
the 2015 lateral expansion extended the life of the Campbell County landfill from 2022 to 2030
Source: Region 2000 Services Authority, Landfill Master Plan - Livestock Road Facility
before deciding not to join the Regional 2000 Services Authority, in 2006 Amherst County considered opening its landfill to Nelson County trash in Option 1 and accepting just Amherst County trash in Option 2
Source: Region 2000 Regional Commission, Alternative Landfill Evaluation