The new landfill was finally constructed adjacent to the Cathcart Landfill. Although this new landfill was prepared by 1992 to receive garbage when Cathcart closed, in 1990 the County Council had decided on a different plan. Due to the siting difficulty, the Council had decided to reserve the new landfill for emergency back-up and to export waste instead. Your garbage now goes through seven steps. First, a private hauler picks up garbage from the curb or dumpster and loads it into a garbage truck.
Some people choose to haul their own garbage to a transfer station or rural drop box.
The truck carries the garbage to one of three Snohomish County transfer stations, located in Arlington, Everett, and Mountlake Terrace. Garbage from rural drop boxes is picked up and trucked to transfer stations by County staff. At the transfer station, the garbage is tipped into a pit, compacted into a cube weighing 25-27 tons, and pushed into a shipping container. The shipping container of garbage is then trucked to the Rabanco Rail Loading Facility in Everett. Every day the shipping containers are loaded onto a train and carried 360 miles to the small town of Roosevelt on the Columbia River.