Since 1973, Russell Gulch has served as the official landfill for the Globe–Miami community, following more than a decade as an unregulated dump that began in the early 1960s.
Today, Russell Gulch receives approximately 100 tons of waste each day. Collected data indicate disposal volumes have continued to rise in recent years.
The 88-acre site is now approaching capacity.
“We're looking at probably sometime next spring, early next summer,” says Aaron Codiga, the county’s recycling and landfill operations manager, who has been in the role for just over a year.
Those projections come from engineering reports submitted to the county. In response, officials are preparing to expand the landfill for a second time in just over two years.
In 2023, operations expanded into Cell 3A, the landfill’s third cell and its current active disposal area.
Now that the space is nearly full, the county is proceeding with building out cell 3B, the final permitted expansion section at Russell Gulch.
Gila County Public Works Director Christine Smith says the county currently has $2 million in enterprise funds earmarked for the project, along with additional reserve funding.
“If it exceeds our reserves, then we'll have to look at other financing options, whether it's within the organization or not,” Smith says.
The project was approved to go out to bid last Tuesday.
Though the expansion of Cell 3B has been underway since 2009, with planning for construction beginning in 2019, as of last year, officials estimated the new cell would not be needed until around 2030, roughly two years before Cell 3A was expected to reach the end of its lifespan. Meanwhile, cell 3A was projected to hold nearly 400,000 cubic yards of material before reaching capacity.
However, several factors shortened its usable life.
According to Smith, engineering reports showed that cell 3A was ultimately constructed as only half of a planned cell.
Additionally, the underground water level was initially much lower when expansion phase 3A was designed. By the time of construction, however, the water table had risen, limiting the depth the cell could reach by 20 to 30 feet, Codiga explains.
“Where they found water, they had to stop, and we couldn't go any deeper,” he says.
The lifespan of a landfill cell depends not only on its depth but also on the type and volume of waste it receives. Some materials, such as demolition debris and construction waste, do not compact efficiently, taking up more space than household trash.
Codiga says cell planning for 3A would have been based on waste tonnage data from 2019 or early 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Over the course of the COVID pandemic, trash volumes were changing significantly,” he says.
The upcoming expansion into cell 3B will allow the county to reclaim space that was never developed from the incomplete portion of cell 3A.
Once open, cell 3B is projected to last approximately 10 to 12 years under current waste volume trends, Codiga says.
“As we're monitoring our tonnage and we're following our best practices for compaction, for building the lifts appropriately, and maximizing the amount of tonnage that we're getting in every yard of airspace, that is going to enable us to best meet the projections for that life expectancy,” he adds.
Still, he noted that unforeseen changes can always occur.
“What we saw with COVID in the planning of 3A … I don't think any of us imagined that volumes everywhere could go up the way they did,” he says.
Once a construction bid is awarded, the contractor will have 95 days to complete cell 3B.
“That's what's in the documents now,” Smith says. “That's a target date, and depending on the conditions, market, equipment, etc., it could change.”
Gila County Supervisor Tim Humphrey says the repeated need for expansion points to long-term challenges in managing local waste.
“It’s a difficult position to be in,” Humphrey says. “I have looked at maps with the county manager to at least do some research on future expansions 15 years down the road, 20 years down the road.”
“I would be interested in looking at the purchase of properties for future landfill expansions,” he adds. “If Gila County is not in the landfill business, what are people going to do — drive to Mesa?”
“We have to take care of our constituents,” he says.
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