Mike Daly remembers when the dirt was there virtually for the taking.

It was the late 1970s, Central Oregon was in the midst of a construction boom and the Deschutes County landfill was flush from mining an uninterrupted, 90-foot-deep seam of dirt – a rarity in the lava-cut badlands east of Bend.

Daly, then working as an excavation contractor with his brother out of Redmond, took advantage of a valuable community resource.

”It was 50 cents per yard and they’d load us,” he said.

Today, as Deschutes County’s solid waste department prepares to excavate a third ”cell” at the landfill, Daly has found himself on the other end of the bulldozer.

Now serving his first term as a Deschutes County Commissioner, he is concerned that the expansion and further excavation of Knott Landfill could flood the county dirt and rock market for years, hurting an industry he worked in.

It’s a difficult position for Daly and fellow Commissioner Dennis Luke, who held a meeting with excavators last month.

They must balance private industry concerns against the financial benefit of expanding Knott Landfill, which Solid Waste Director Timm Schimke estimates could save Deschutes County about $30 million through the year 2029.

”I think the major concern about this issue is the county competing with the private sector,” said Bud Rose, manager of a private pit adjacent to Knott Landfill.

Private contractors who excavate and haul rock and dirt have had a long relationship with the landfill, according to Schimke.

When the first pits were dug in the 1970s, the county sold valuable dirt at low cost, fueling construction in and around Bend.

”At that time we weren’t trying to maximize our profit,” Schimke said.

That policy abruptly changed in the early 1980s. Faced with increasing environmental regulation that required that more dirt be spread over waste piles the county stopped selling the dirt. That was despite claims by the construction industry that the local economy would suffer from a lack of affordable dirt.

The need for dirt became so acute that soon the county was forced to truck it in to cover the growing piles of waste in its landfill. By 1996, the landfill was budgeting $250,000 per year to buy cover dirt, a financial issue that would eventually lead the county to consider the current expansion.

With space running out at the landfill in the mid 1990s, the Deschutes County Commission began the process of finding a new site, eventually narrowing down a list of 25 sites to two. But the county couldn’t reach a deal with the owners of one of the sites, and an offer to buy the other was rescinded following an election that changed the makeup of the board, Schimke said.

Finally, convinced that expansion of Knott Landfill could eliminate what had become a costly line item, the commissioners approved expansion of the landfill about two years ago, scrapping a previous plan to close in 2009. The expansion will involve removing several buildings, constructing others on the northern edge of the landfill and digging the new pit where the old buildings stood.

County officials plan to use about $6 million of a recent $32 million bond issue to pay for the expansion.

By using dirt and rock scraped out of the new pit to line and cover it, the county landfill will save millions of dollars it would have spent buying the dirt from outside sources, Schimke said. In addition, by maximizing the life of the landfill, Schimke estimates the county will bring down the cost of processing a ton of waste from $25 to $20.

That means expanding the landfill instead of closing it in 2009 will save the county about $30 million, he said.

But part of that expected savings will depend on how the county disposes of the estimated 3.7 million cubic yards of soil and 1.6 million cubic yards of rock that will be dug out of the landfill during the 55-acre expansion. The county plans to use about 2.4 million cubic yards of dirt in the expansion, as well as 600,000 cubic yards of rock, leaving more than 2 million cubic yards of excess material.

Excavators, particularly those with pits close to Knott Landfill, are wary of any plan that would put the excess material on the market. Some say the county should keep the dirt for future use and truck chunks of unprocessed rock to the Rose pit, which is nearing the end of its life and will need to be filled in for future development.

”It’s a natural win instead of glutting the market with a bunch of rock,” said Kevin Peterman, owner of Able Supply and the operator of a rock and dirt pit in Deschutes River Woods.

Operators of the Crook County landfill, which recently underwent a 12-acre expansion, opted to keep the excavated material rather than sell it on the market, according to landfill manager Alan Keller.

”We wouldn’t do that to the public,” Keller said.

He said Crook County will use much of the rock removed from the 54-foot-deep pit for a large road project. The dirt will be stockpiled and used to cover the new landfill pit, he added.

Deschutes County plans to meet regularly with the excavators to come up with a solution. The actual excavation of the new landfill pit is still more than 18 months away.

”We just feel really fortunate the county’s even listening to us,” said Ron Robinson, of excavating contractor Jack Robinson and Sons Inc. ”They’ve actually scheduled these meetings a year and a half before they have to do anything.”

Chris Barker can be reached at 541-617-7829 or at cbarker@bendbulletin.com.