Helena-West Helena approves $112,000 landfill bulldozer purchase

Helena-West Helena moved to turn an incoming contaminated-soil project into a working piece of landfill equipment, approving a $112,000 bulldozer purchase without competitive bidding at a special city council meeting.

At the June 4 meeting, held at 4:30 p.m. after a June 3 public notice, the Helena-West Helena City Council adopted Ordinance No. 10, 2026 and voted 6-0 to authorize the purchase for the city landfill. Members said the bulldozer would be paid for with revenue expected from the contaminated-soil project, a choice that makes the vote more than a routine equipment buy. It is a test of whether the city can use a short-term project to strengthen one of its most important public assets without shifting the cost onto residents.

That asset is the Helena-West Helena Regional Landfill, which the city says handles solid waste from Phillips, Lee and St. Francis counties. The landfill page lists a tipping fee of $35 per ton, underscoring how much regional business already flows through the site. Because the landfill serves multiple counties, equipment decisions there affect more than Helena-West Helena alone. A bulldozer can shape access roads, compact waste and keep day-to-day operations moving at a site that functions as part of the district’s wider infrastructure, not simply as a local dump.

The purchase also fits a longer repair effort. In April 2024, the city told the Arkansas Department of Energy and Environment that dozers and compactors had broken down at the landfill and that it was operating with a lease agreement for new equipment. City officials also said then that they planned to secure financing in the near future to buy additional equipment. The June 2026 vote suggests Helena-West Helena is still trying to rebuild the landfill’s backup capacity after those failures exposed how quickly a breakdown can strain a public service tied to city finances.

Records from the Arkansas Division of Environmental Quality list the facility as Permit No. 0258-S1-R1 and AFIN 54-00086 in Phillips County, with filings continuing in 2025 and 2026, including a 2025 annual engineering inspection report and 2026 corrective action reports. A 2024 inspection of the city’s Class 4 landfill reported no allegations of noncompliance at the time. The landfill is also tied to the Storm Creek area, giving the decision added neighborhood and environmental weight as the city tries to stabilize an essential regional service.