A parade of Knife River dump trucks delivered loads of asphalt last week to pave the new recreational vehicle dump located on the north end of 24th Avenue, behind the FAC facility.
Watching a paving machine lay down steam strips of brand-new asphalt Wednesday, Feb. 26, was Tristan Davis, county Parks and Recreation operations supervisor, who has overseen the process of planning and building the four-lane public recreational vehicle wastewater disposal facility.
“I’m really excited about this facility,” Davis said, adding that he’s particularly happy that the dump will be accessible to the public. “This facility will be usable by anyone, so if you’re on Hwy. 20 driving over the mountain, or you’re coming home or wherever, you’re welcome to pull in here. If you’re on I-5 and you want to detour and go see a friend in Sweet Home and dump your RV, well, here you go.
The facility is located on 4.62 acres owned by Linn County, which was carved off the former Willamette Industries (Weyerhaeuser) mill site before the remaining portion was sold three years ago to local businessman Josh Victor.
The site, just east of Bi-Mart, will be accessed by a two-lane driveway from 24th Avenue, which was part of the paving project last week and will also serve the homeless shelter.
Linn County park dump sites for use by campsite users are currently located at Riverbend County Park ($7 dump fee), Sunnyside Campground (dump fee included in $35 campsite charge), and Waterloo County Park ($7 dump fee). Other nearby dump sites can be found at Sweet Home RV Center, 4691 Hwy. 20, and Gill’s Landing RV Park, 1400 Grant St. East, Lebanon.
Davis said the Riverbend and Waterloo dumps are restricted to campers due to EPA requirements. The Sunnyside facility will eventually be decommissioned because it cannot meet required EPA standards, he said.
Plus, during busy seasons, there’s often a long wait for RVs to access the facilities, he said.
“We have RV dumps at numerous county parks that we’re struggling with, trying to keep up with the high use on those, keeping them within standards.”
Former Linn County Parks Director Brian Carroll, now retired, proposed the idea of the larger public dump, Davis said, working with the Oregon State Parks Department to procure $750,000 in grant funds that covered much of the cost of the $800,000 project. The project has taken 3½ years to complete, with the official opening anticipated by early May.
“We got the idea of constructing a multi-lane RV dump facility for people, that’s kind of like a one-stop shop,” Davis said. “There’ll be potable water here, a garbage facility, and black tanks. We just worked through a design phase to put it in here.”
The new facility will also deposit directly into the city’s main sewer trunk line, he said. That is expected to alleviate a problem that Linn County has been coming up against with its park septic systems.
Linn County Parks Director Stacey Whaley told The New Era that toilets in households use a lot of water to flush the effluent away, thus diluting the contents, but toilets in RVs use very little water in the process. As such, the county park septic systems are becoming increasingly more difficult to meet DEQ standards.
Davis said there were some challenges along the way, “as is typical with large projects,” including the discovery of methane gas produced by wood chips from past mill operations.
“This is the old log pond,” he said, gesturing toward the area where each of the four lanes passes by its own water tower.
The methane problem was solved by installing two diffusers, which dissipate any gas collected by an underground system, he said.
The Sweet Home City Council in 2023 agreed to prohibit parking on 24th Avenue north of Main Street, in part to improve access for large vehicles trying to access the dump facility.
Whaley said users will access the dump services at a kiosk that will accept credit cards. Cost will be $10 per vehicle. Davis said the county has contracted for that with a Sisters-based firm, Santa Star, which already has pay stations at River Bend.
“You just tap your credit card, it unlocks it and you can dump,” he said.
The new facility will be particularly useful in the summer, he said.
“Even during the Jamboree when there’s hundreds of RVs around town, this will be great for them,” he said. “You pull in, there’s four lanes, there shouldn’t be a 45-minute wait like we see at River Bend sometimes.”
