Cedar Rapids/Linn County Solid Waste Agency Moves to Expand Marion Landfill

The board of directors for the Cedar Rapids/Linn County Solid Waste Agency have voted to expand Marion’s Site 2 landfill by 14 acres.

The updates are expected to come incrementally — they’ve budgeted two additional phases of the expansion recently for $4.27 million, with another phase to come later.

The work for these two phases is slated to be finished by the end of July 2013. According to the Gazette, this expansion will extend the life of the landfill by nine years. 

This comes after talks of a plasma-powered trash vaporizing facility from a Florida-based firm that could potentially transform trash from that landfill, in addition to trash from other sources, into clean energy or steam.

The City of Marion has been in the with the company to bring such a plant to Marion or Cedar Rapids. 

A local environmental group, Waste Not Iowa, has been credited for initiating the talks for the facility after the Marion landfill was built, in an effort to find an alternative to the landfill.