After years of conflict with neighbors, Meridian composting site to close. Now we know when
This story was updated Dec. 18 to reflect the City Council vote on Dec. 17.
Timber Creek Recycling, the composting center in south Meridian that has butted heads with neighbors for years over odors and operations, is leaving Meridian. And finally, neighbors know when.
The Meridian City Council voted 5-1 Tuesday evening to approve the center’s request for a development agreement modification that would allow it to “responsibly decommission” over the next three years as it shifts operations to a new site in Nampa. The final date for move-out: June 30, 2027.
Council Member John Overton was the one to suggest the “compromise” date at a previous public hearing on Nov. 12, weighing concerns from neighbors, who want the business and its smelly materials out, especially as residential development inches closer.
The City Council doubled down on the idea of compromise Tuesday night, with Council President Luke Cavener noting that “nobody’s walking away feeling like they got a win, regardless of how this all plays out.”
Timber Creek is located west of Locust Grove Road and south of Lake Hazel Road on land that was previously a dairy farm. For the past decade, the center, owned by longtime farm family the Murgoitios, has received waste like leaves and construction materials and processed it into new products, mainly compost and cattle bedding. The process keeps 400 million pounds of these materials out of Treasure Valley landfills each year.
In 2016, the center was annexed into the city and zoned for future residential development. Timber Creek agreed in 2019 that it would plan to be done with operations by 2029 or 30 days after a resident moved within 1,000 feet of the site, whichever came first.
Recently, the 1,000-foot occupancy trigger has become a more imminent reality in the rural region of south Meridian that borders Kuna. Brighton’s Pinnacle subdivision is expanding nearby, and Black Rock Homes is planning a residential development that could cross the 1,000-foot threshold as early as spring 2025.
So, Timber Creek asked Meridian for a development agreement modification that would remove the 30-day condition, saying it’s willing to leave but needs more time to “do it right,” Timber Creek President Mike Murgoitio told the Idaho Statesman earlier this month.
“We realize we’re not forward-compatible with what the city wants to do with this property,” Murgoitio told the Statesman.
Murgoitio explained that compost on the site — which is activated and heated by microbes — needs to cool down and stabilize or risk catching fire. And materials need to get trucked to the new site in Nampa, which started accepting compost in January and is still being built to full capacity.
In the meantime, neighbors have complained about the center’s “rancid” smell, especially since it started accepting a material called waste-activated sludge, an industrial waste that is a byproduct of cheese production.
“The smell is not agricultural,” Troy Allen, who lives off of Locust Grove about a mile southwest of Timber Creek on an alfalfa farm, told the Statesman. “It’s just really rancid, and when you smell it … you don’t want to be outside.”
Allen and other neighbors have voiced concerns for years that the industrial waste has made it impossible to use their backyards on certain days, depending on the weather and wind, and have argued that the material shouldn’t be accepted at all.
Timber Creek says the material is acceptable and the compost it produces is organic. Meridian City Attorney Bill Nary confirmed with the Statesman after the Nov. 12 hearing that the sludge is not prohibited by the center’s development agreement, which he said is “very broadly worded.”
To address these and other concerns, Timber Creek’s request to the City Council on Tuesday included a transition plan with benchmarks for materials to be moved to Nampa, ending June 30, 2027 — regardless of how close any nearby homes get. Timber Creek also agreed to work with the nearby Sorrento cheese factory to apply lime to the sludge before it is trucked to the compositing site, in order to reduce odor upon arrival.
In addition, Timber Creek agreed to stop accepting concrete, another material that concerned neighbors, because when it is ground, it releases silica dust, which, if inhaled, can increase risks of lung cancer, according to the National Cancer Institute. Timber Creek received its last batch of concrete Oct. 31, and Lacy Ooi of Meridian Code Enforcement confirmed in later visits that no more concrete had been received.
Trust issues?
Hearing Timber Creek’s proposed transition plan and compromise end date in 2027, several City Council members were satisfied with the effort.
“This is literally what I was hoping would be in front of us this evening,” Overton said of the draft modified development agreement and transition plan. Overton had proposed a continuance of the previous hearing to allow Timber Creek time to develop the proposal.
The June 30, 2027, end date was also proposed by Overton at the previous hearing, to the satisfaction of Black Rock Homes, at the time.
A month later, the developers have changed their mind.
Laren Bailey, president of land development at Devco Development, spoke on behalf of Black Rock and Devco at this week’s hearing, indicating the development companies are no longer in support of Timber Creek’s most recent proposal.
Bailey said the companies have made “a significant investment” in land adjacent to the center, under the “vital assurances” that the center would leave once residential development came close enough.
Asked what caused the change of heart, Bailey said, “The biggest issue is we feel like it’s still a moving target.”
Bailey said Timber Creek has changed its timeline for decommissioning several times, and that, “We feel like there’s not enough verification that things are happening that are supposed to be.”
“We just don’t feel like there’s any sideboards that are going to hold them to that long term,” Bailey said.
Trust and accountability have also been concerns for neighbors.
“The neighbors don’t really have any trust in them on what they say,” Edgar previously told the Statesman, an issue exacerbated by a regulatory gap the company seems to sit in between the Department of Environmental Quality, Central District Health and Meridian Code Enforcement.
Edgar said he’s made phone calls over the years, but would get stuck in a loop of finger-pointing and transferred phone calls. He wants to see the company “held accountable.”
“Make them have some skin in the game,” Edgar said.
Overton said the agencies generally rely on compliance-based enforcement — nudges to companies to follow the rules — but if an issue is persistent, they have the courts at their disposal.
Overton also said the transition plan — while it extends longer than neighbors want — offers much-needed certainty, for all parties.
Without the occupancy trigger, Overton said, there won’t be any chance of “games played,” like Timber Creek moving operations around within its property to evade the 1,000-foot line, which the company has not said it would do.
“We want to make sure we’re dealing straight up,” Overton said. “No one’s trying to pull a fast one on anybody else. We’re just trying to find the quickest, easiest runway to end this process, end it successfully.”
The lone vote in opposition came from Council Member Liz Strader, who wanted tighter reins on the decommissioning process.
Timber Creek Vice President Caleb Lakey told the Statesman in a phone interview Wednesday that he was happy the city reached a “workable compromise” and that his company now has “clarity” and “finality.”
Murgiotio, the president, told the Statesman he feels “bittersweet” about leaving the land his family has owned for many years, but he says he’s glad to be moving to a “state-of-the-art” facility in Nampa and that “many other families (will) enjoy this land like we did.”
This story was originally published December 18, 2024 at 1:21 PM.
