Starkville's Board of Aldermen and the Oktibbeha County Board of Supervisors have each signed off on their halves of a more than $2.1 million bid to remediate and finally close the Starkville-Oktibbeha landfill, a roughly 15-acre site near the intersection of Rockhill and Butler roads that has sat unresolved for more than a decade. The work, overseen by the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, may begin within the next two months.
The landfill's history is a tangle of stops and starts. According to The Commercial Dispatch, the site ceased operations in 2016, resumed in March 2017, and then reached capacity and shut down for good in 2018. Starkville submitted remediation plans to MDEQ in 2019, but the project has taken years to reach this stage. The remediation work itself will involve relocating waste within the landfill's existing boundaries, leveling slopes, compacting the waste, and capping it under a layer of soil, per the same report.
Mississippi regulations are specific about what that capping has to look like. Class I rubbish site operators must apply a minimum two-foot layer of low-permeability earthen final cover across completed disposal areas within 30 days of reaching final permitted elevation, according to the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality. Federal EPA requirements include a 30-year post-closure period.
Seven Years of Sanitation Fees Built the City's Share
Starkville's half of the project traces back to a 2019 decision by the Board of Aldermen to raise monthly sanitation rates by $1.50 for residential pickup and $5 for commercial pickup, with the added revenue earmarked specifically for landfill remediation and placed into a restricted escrow account. By September, that escrow held roughly $1.4 million, the paper's reporting notes. City officials expect the surplus beyond project costs to cover any surprises during construction, with leftover funds going toward one-time sanitation department needs like a vehicle purchase or building rehabilitation.
Oktibbeha County's half of the bill comes from a different pot entirely. The county is funding its share using ad valorem tax revenues that had previously been committed to servicing debt on OCH Regional Medical Center, freed up after the county sold the hospital to Baptist Memorial Health Care in August 2025. That sale, finalized in October 2025, brought roughly $30.5 million in net proceeds to the county after Baptist paid about $49.1 million at closing, roughly $5.9 million below the original announced $55 million purchase price, according to The Commercial Dispatch. Under the deal, Becker's Hospital Review reported that Baptist committed to $96.8 million in capital investment into the hospital while maintaining existing clinical service lines and staff; Baptist operates 24 regional hospitals across Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas.
Trails, Drones or Solar Could Follow, But Not Right Away
City officials have floated ideas for what comes after capping, including a walking trail, a drone field, or a solar site, with the site potentially eligible for redevelopment after being capped for a year. Mayor Lynn Spruill said the board will revisit those redevelopment options once the project is complete, per the Dispatch's reporting. Post-closure care includes monitoring and maintenance.
Starkville now sends its municipal garbage to the Golden Triangle Regional Landfill on Old West Point Road, a regional facility that has operated Mississippi's first publicly funded landfill gas-to-electricity plant since October 2011. That facility uses a GE Jenbacher engine to generate nearly 1 megawatt of renewable electricity for roughly 700 average U.S. homes, with power sold to the Tennessee Valley Authority grid, according to GE. Statewide, permitted landfills and rubbish sites handled more than 5.9 million tons of solid waste in 2023.
Columbus Faces a Similar Clock on Its Own Landfill
Neighboring Columbus is wrestling with a parallel problem at its own 23-acre Armstrong Road rubbish site, which has served as a dumpsite for rubbish and construction waste for more than 30 years before closing to the public in 2024. The Columbus landfill does not accept household garbage, but it does take waste collected by the city's public works department, with additional city garbage routed to the regional center near West Point. City Engineer Kevin Stafford estimated the site had just 1.94 years of useful life left at its five-year average tonnage rate, but said it could stretch to about 11 years if it accepts only public works waste going forward, depending on how projected annual tonnage holds up. Stafford warned that a single storm could exhaust the landfill's remaining space.
The numbers underline why Columbus officials are watching Starkville's project closely. Annual waste volume at the Columbus site dropped from 28,000 tons in 2014 to 3,385 tons in 2025 as customers found other disposal options, according to the Dispatch. Operating the Columbus site now costs the city about $150,000 annually against roughly $120,000 in fee revenue; separately, the landfill's closure and capping has been initially estimated to cost more than $2 million, though that figure could shift as the city develops designs and receives bids. Ward 6 Councilman Jason Spears has proposed raising funds and creating an escrow account similar to Starkville's, though the city has not decided whether to keep using the regional center or develop a new landfill of its own. Spears said more discussion is needed this year about funding and the project's direction.
