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Benton County Commissioner appointed to lead new state task force

December 15, 2025 in News

Commissioner Malone in meeting

Benton County Commissioner Pat Malone has been appointed by Governor Tina Kotek to lead the state’s new Task Force on Municipal Solid Waste in the Willamette Valley. The task force will continue the work, wrapped up in July, of the Regional Sustainable Materials Management Plan (SMMP) Task Force convened in 2024 by Benton County.

Malone learned of his appointment just before Thanksgiving when he saw the governor at the Association of Oregon Counties annual conference in Eugene.

The task force has 12 members. Eight voting members were appointed by Governor Kotek:                        

  • Pat Malone, Chair, Benton County Commissioner, representing the Association of Oregon Counties
  • Kristan Mitchell, Vice Chair, Oregon Refuse & Recycling Association, subject matter expert in the disposal of municipal solid waste
  • Courtney Flathers, Governor’s Office, representing the Governor
  • Julie Jackson, Republic Services, representing a private hauler of solid waste that operates a landfill in the Willamette Valley
  • Brian May, Marion County Public Works, subject matter expert in the disposal of municipal solid waste
  • Celeste Meiffren-Swango, Oregon Environmental Council, representing environmental organizations
  • Crystal Weston, Oregon Environmental Council, representing environmental organizations
  • Jason Williams, Public Works Director, City of Lebanon, representing the League of Oregon Cities

Four nonvoting Legislative Members were appointed to the task force by the Senate President and House Speaker to act in an advisory capacity

  • Representative Ed Diehl (R-House District 17)
  • Representative Sarah Finger McDonald (D-House District 16)
  • Senator Courtney Neron Misslin (D-Senate District 13)
  • Senator Todd Nash (R-Senate District 29)

Erin Pischke and Beth Reiley from the state’s Legislative Policy and Research Office will provide staff support to the task force, bringing extension experience and state connections.

Task force meetings will be open to the public, and other experts and interested parties will be invited to participate. The first meeting will be held Tuesday, Dec. 16 in Salem to kick off work before the end of 2025.

After a year, the task force will submit a report by Dec. 15, 2026, to the interim committees of the Legislative Assembly related to the environment. The report may include recommendations for legislation. The task force then will sunset on Dec. 31, 2026.

A man with a plan

Commissioner Malone has been working on the solid waste problem in the area for more than four years, first in Benton County Talks Trash and then on the SMMP task force. Nearly everywhere he goes, he finds himself talking about the problem of solid waste. It is on the minds of leaders in counties and municipalities throughout western Oregon.

Malone feels growing urgency to begin the next phase of this work: “The clock is ticking – we don’t have a lot of time to put a real, long-term solution in place for this region.”

“If things go well, it takes about a decade to site and build a solid waste transfer station,” said Malone, “and that’s roughly the amount of life left right now in the Coffin Butte landfill.”

Building new transfer stations in four core counties — Benton, Linn, Marion and Polk —is part of a solution recommended by the SMMP Task Force. Tillamook, Lincoln and Yamhill counties would also be involved in the plan. 

Having a transfer station has the potential to greatly increase a county’s solid waste recovery rate — the percentage of total waste that gets diverted from landfills and incineration for beneficial purposes like reuse, recycling, composting and energy recovery.

Malone cites Lane County as an example, with the highest recovery rate in the state at 52%. When the planned CleanLane Resource Recovery Facility is completed, the rate is expected to rise to at least 63% as an additional 80,000 tons of material annually are diverted from the county’s landfill.

Polk County just approved the zoning on a new solid waste transfer facility to be built on the site of the former Rickreall Dairy. The county first identified the need for a transfer facility in the 1970s and began working to secure a site about eight years ago. Even with the land use approval done, there are still other permits to obtain before building can begin.

Malone is eager for Benton County — with a recovery rate of only 31.5% when the most recent data were released in 2022 — to start the process of identifying and permitting a site for a transfer station that can bring that rate up to 44%, the County’s current goal. 

After seeing how much the SMMP task force was able to accomplish in less than a year, Malone is optimistic about what the state task force can do in the next year.

“Some of the task force worked on SMMP, and the state staffers are really savvy, so people are warmed up — we’re not starting from zero,” he said. “We’ll cover a lot of ground in a year, and we’ll keep asking ‘How can we keep things going?’.”

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