Mill Seat Landfill is approaching the end of its useful life. It's likely to happen sometime around 2018, though the county-owned landfill may have a couple of years beyond that estimate, due to fluctuations in the amount of waste coming in.

Mill Seat is a 615-acre site in the Town of Riga, though the landfill footprint is 98.6 acres. It takes in household and commercial garbage, as well as construction and demolition debris and some industrial wastes. It does not accept hazardous waste.

The expiration date may be a decade off, but in terms of landfill planning, that is not a long time. For Monroe County officials, that means it's time to start thinking about the landfill's future: whether to close it or expand it. That discussion will be a part of an upcoming update to the county's solid waste master plan, which addresses everything from recycling and landfills to how waste is collected.

"Permitting a landfill is a long process - probably five years at least," says Russell Rutkowski, an associate engineer in the county's Department of Environmental Services. "One of the things we'll be looking at as part of this plan will be what the future of disposal will be in Monroe County after 2018, when the landfill itself is filled."

There's no law requiring Monroe County to have a landfill or to contract with landfills. It's a local decision, says Maureen Wren, a DEC spokeswoman. But in some ways, waste disposal is a moral responsibility, says Ed Kieda, an environmental engineer with the DEC's Region 8 office. It is a public health issue, he says, so it makes sense for counties and other local governments to play a strong role in waste disposal and recycling.

Monroe County opened the Mill Seat Landfill in 1993 following extensive debate and legal battling that spanned more than a decade.

Without a landfill of its own, the county was paying for other landfills to take in the waste. Occasionally, the county had problems finding a place that would take its trash. In the late 1970's, for example, there were times when the county piled garbage in shopping center parking lots, says County Legislator Paul Haney, who was Monroe's finance director when many issues surrounding the landfill were discussed and settled in the Legislature.

"If you don't have a place of your own to take it, you're at the mercy of the market for what you're going to pay," Haney says.

The county ran Mill Seat when it first opened, but officials eventually realized they lacked the necessary staff. They sought out a contractor to run the landfill, and in 2002 leased the facility to Waste Management. The county maintains ownership.

Originally, the landfill was to accept waste from within Monroe County and the Town of Bergen in Genesee County. That changed in 2005, when the county and the Town of Riga agreed to accept waste from throughout the state, excluding New York City counties. Approximately 7 percent of the waste in Mill Seat came from outside of Monroe County in 2008.

The Mill Seat Landfill will be only one factor in the upcoming solid waste management plan update. The plan will take into account a number of interrelated issues, such as the total disposal capacity available to Monroe County, including Mill Seat. That means facilities like Waste Management's High Acres landfill in Perinton and Macedon factor in.

The plan's ultimate goal is to direct less waste into landfills. So a major part of the plan will be a waste composition study, Rutkowski says. The county and its consultants - the County Legislature has already approved the hiring of Barton & Loguidice - will look at the makeup of the waste collected from residents. They'll look to see what's going into landfills that could be recycled or reused through existing programs. The goal, Rutkowski says, is to develop education programs so residents understand what goes where.

"Waste paper, organics, yard waste, and things like that are still part of our waste stream and we have programs in place to handle those," Rutkowski says.

That won't be enough, however, to significantly extend Mill Seat's lifespan.

There are other options available if the county opts to ultimately close Mill Seat. Officials could, for example, look for another regional landfill to take the county's waste, though there'd be a cost attached.

High Acres Landfill recently received DEC approval to expand, so that facility could be one option, although the county hasn't indicated that it wants to head in that direction. Waste Management officials estimate that the expansion will extend the landfill's life by 40 years.

Expanding Mill Seat is another option. And in that case, there's precedent. Expanding a landfill is an expensive, complicated, and time-consuming proposition, but state officials generally prefer expansions to new landfills.

If that is ultimately what happens, there are issues that would have to be considered, such as the availability of land. Environmental issues are another: landfills are often shut down for environmental problems. But the DEC's Kieda says he isn't aware of any such problems at Mill Seat.

If the county does close Mill Seat, the landfill would be capped - a standard process that's meant to keep the landfill's contents securely enclosed.