Dunn County PR&D recommends rezone for former solid waste and recycling site
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By LeAnn R. Ralph
MENOMONIE — The Dunn County Planning, Resources and Development Committee is recommending to the county board that the former solid waste and recycling site be rezoned as General Commercial in anticipation of selling the property.
The PR&D committee first discussed the possibility of a rezone for the former solid waste and recycling transfer station on August 21, said Tracie Albrightson, Dunn County planning and zoning enforcement, at the PR&D committee’s November 20 meeting.
Ann Wodarczyk, zoning administrator, could not attend the meeting, so Albrightson represented the zoning office.
The PR&D committee postponed the public hearing on October 2 until the Town of Menomonie Plan Commission and the Menomonie Town Board had an opportunity to discuss the proposed rezone and to make a recommendation to the county, Albrightson said.
The former transfer station parcel, located west of Menomonie on state Highway 29, is 10 acres and currently is zoned as General Agriculture.
The recommendation is to rezone the parcel to General Commercial, which would allow light manufacturing, warehousing and professional offices, Albrightson said.
General Commercial will balance the flexibility to use the property with compatibility for surrounding land uses, she said.
Town of Menomonie
Wodarczyk attended the Town of Menomonie Plan Commission meeting to talk about the proposed rezone, Albrightson said.
The Town of Menomonie Plan Commission is recommending a rezone to General Commercial, which aligns with future development goals for the area, and on November 12, the Menomonie Town Board recommended rezoning the parcel from General Agriculture to General Commercial, she said.
The next step is for the PR&D committee to approve the recommendation to rezone the transfer station parcel or to deny the recommendation, and then to send the recommendation to the Dunn County Executive Committee, which will then forward the recommendation to the Dunn County Board, Albrightson said.
Mike Kneer, county board supervisor from Menomonie and a member of the PR&D committee, pointed out that the public hearing on November 20 would be the only time the public could make comments on the proposed rezone.
Tom Quinn, county board supervisor from Downing and chair of the PR&D committee, confirmed that the public hearing on November 20 would be the only opportunity for the public to make comments on the proposal and noted that there were no members of the public wishing to speak.
At the October 2 meeting, when the public hearing was first opened, one neighbor of the former transfer station said that the ditches in the area were much cleaner now that the solid waste and recycling transfer station had been closed.
After closing the public hearing, the PR&D committee unanimously approved a motion to recommend that the Dunn County Board rezone the 10-acre parcel located at E3900 state Road 29 in the Town of Menomonie from General Agriculture to General Commercial.
Voting in favor of the motion were Quinn; Kneer; Monica Berrier, county board supervisor from Menomonie; and Diane Morehouse, county board supervisor from Menomonie.
Gary Bjork, county board supervisor from Colfax and vice-chair of the PR&D committee, was absent from the meeting.
Contamination
The Dunn County Facilities Committee decided at the May 22, 2024, meeting not to propose a Phase 2 inspection of the transfer station property, at a cost of $8,400, to determine exactly what contamination exists, if any.
A Phase I inspection of the property did not raise any suspicion that here might be contamination.
If contamination was found at the transfer station site, Dunn County would have to report the contamination to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and would have to pay for cleaning up the contamination.
The property can be sold “as is,” and then any contamination would become the responsibility of the new property owner.
The existing transfer station was built in the 1990s and designed to be used for 15 years, but the property was actually in use as a transfer station for 30 years.
The recycling center and transfer station closed as of January 1, 2021, after member municipalities withdrew from Dunn County’s solid waste and recycling program to become their own “responsible units” for recycling.
The uncertainty of whether the per capita for member municipalities was going to increase from $23 to $60 or $80 or perhaps even $100 created too much of a budgeting problem for municipalities under the state’s property tax levy limit.
State law requires all municipalities to either be their own responsible unit or to sign on as part of another municipality’s responsible unit.
When Dunn County solid waste and recycling closed, the estimate to repair the building was $225,000.
The additional 20-acres the county purchased in March of 2017 for $175,000 was intended as the site for a new transfer station where a state-of-the-art facility could be built on a better site.
A referendum question on the November of 2020 election ballot to allow Dunn County to exceed the revenue limit by $1 million per year for five years to build a new Dunn County solid waste and recycling facility failed with 13,403 “no” votes (61 percent) to 8,491 “yes”’ votes (39 percent).
Even though the county’s solid waste and recycling program would be closing down at the end of December of 2020, the referendum question was still on ballot because the county board had approved the question by the deadline, and it was too late to take the question off the ballot.
