St. Louis County landfill begins taking Duluth area waste

The St. Louis County Regional Landfill in Virginia began taking municipal solid waste from the Duluth-area Resource Renew system on Wednesday, shifting the region’s trash flow away from Superior and into St. Louis County’s disposal network.

The move follows a 10-year agreement approved in May 2025 between St. Louis County and Resource Renew, the public name for the Western Lake Superior Sanitary District. Under that deal, waste began going to Virginia as the Moccasin Mike landfill in Superior neared capacity and was expected to close June 30, ending a disposal arrangement that had handled the region’s trash for about 40 years.

Resource Renew serves about 140,000 people across a 530-square-mile area around Duluth, including communities such as Hermantown, Proctor, Cloquet, Rice Lake, Scanlon, Thomson, Wrenshall and surrounding townships. The system had been sending about 16 large trucks a day to Superior, and the route change immediately resets the logistics of hauling, transfer, and disposal for households and local governments across the Duluth area.

The biggest near-term burden is cost. Resource Renew told customers to expect trash bills to rise by about $20 to $30 a year as hauling costs increase from roughly $17 a ton to about $35 a ton effective July 1. That makes the landfill change more than a back-end contract swap; it will show up in the monthly bills of residents and businesses that depend on the system.

County officials have framed the agreement as a way to keep disposal capacity and revenue in St. Louis County while giving the region a longer-term outlet for trash. Annie Harala, the county board chair, Keith Nelson, Brandon Kohlts and David Fink all described the deal as a major infrastructure step with environmental and financial implications for the Northland.

Those implications are tied to the Virginia site itself. The landfill has operated since 1993 and is the only municipal solid-waste landfill in Northeast Minnesota, according to county materials. St. Louis County says planned upgrades could extend its usable life from about 20 years to more than 70 years, and the county has invested about $22 million in a new leachate treatment system to handle PFAS and other contaminants. The site currently treats about 5 million to 6 million gallons of leachate each year.

The county is also pursuing an Integrated Solid Waste Management Campus in Canyon, Minnesota, aimed at regional leachate and PFAS-contaminated waste management. Together with the Virginia landfill deal, it points to a larger long-range strategy for waste handling, water-quality protection and landfill capacity across northeastern Minnesota.