Cowlitz County is home to two open active landfills, a transfer station, several recycling facilities, a drop box facility, and multiple closed landfills and disposal sites.  The Environmental Health Unit (EHU) of the Building and Planning Department is responsible for regulating and permitting all of these sites.  These sites fall under the State of Washington Administrative Codes (WAC) 173-350 and 173-351 and Cowlitz County Code (CCC) 15.30.

There are two actively operating landfills in the County.  The County owns and operates a landfill on Tenant Way just outside of the Longview city boundaries.  The other active landfill is owned and operated by Weyerhaeuser NR.  Weyerhaeuser's landfill is located at the end of Headquarters road above Silver Lake.

The County landfill is permitted under WAC 173-351 and is considered a municipal landfill.  This landfill disposes of normal non-hazardous household waste as well as some industrial and commercial wastes and some construction and demolition wastes.  The County landfill is closed to the public.  All waste is brought to the landfill through the Waste Control Transfer Station on Third avenue in Longview.

The Weyerhaeuser landfill is a limited purpose landfill regulated under WAC 173-350.  This landfill takes some industrial waste as well as construction and demolition waste and some commercial waste.  There has been interest lately in re-permitting this landfill under WAC 173-351 as a municipal landfill.  The original Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit for this landfill are available in the link bar on the right side of this page.  Since the documents are quite large they have been split into multiple volumes.