SALISBURY, MD – The Wicomico County Solid Waste Division has proposed an increase in tipping fees for commercial haulers due to a significant rise in waste intake and costs associated with ongoing construction at the landfill.
In 2024, the Wicomico County landfill on Brick Kiln Road saw approximately 165,000 tons of waste. Solid Waste Division officials told WBOC that this surpassed the volume dumped at neighboring landfills in Worchester, Somerset and Dorchester counties, combined.
On June 4, 2024, the county council signed a resolution to increase the per ton tipping fee for commercial haulers from $67 to $100. They later retracted the move when local trash disposal companies voiced their concerns.
Wicomico County officials will hear public comment regarding continued gradual increased during Tuesday evening's meeting council meeting.
Resolution No. 72-2025 proposes raising the tipping fee from $78 per ton to $84 per ton starting July 1, with an additional $4 increase scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1, 2026.
"Where we stand with our current capacity and where we have to go in the future with cell construction and cell expansion to make sure that we have a solvent and viable resource for the community in the future, we don't really have much of a choice but to really implement this now," Acting Landfill Superintendent and Director of Wicomico Environmental Service Adam Corry said.
The current landfill cell, cell 6, is filling up at nearly double the anticipated rate, and the cell 7 is not yet ready to take its place, exacerbating the urgency for the proposed fee changes.
Corry said that the quick succession of fee increases is the result of keeping the tipping costs too low for too long.
"We don't use taxpayer dollars to fund our operations," Corry said.
"Our operations are funded based on that scale house that takes the fee when people come across the scales."
Andrew Duley owns Seagull Disposal. He told WBOC that these increases are happening too quickly for his business and other commercial trash companies to respond to without taking a financial hit.
"They're trying to catch things back up and have workable equipment and we agree with all of that, generally," Duley said. "The problem is they're trying to catch us all up within a year or two and it's too short of a time frame."
Duley said he would like to see county officials consider smaller increases across landfill services rather than one larger increase on the tipping fee for commercial haulers.
Residential dump permit holders will not face fee hikes. Residential dumping accounted for only 10,000 tons of the total waste taken in during 2024.
"It's literally a drop in the bucket," Corry said. "I would not want to put that burden on those citizens because the lion's share is not coming from commercial haulers."
Wicomico County Executive Julie Giordano responded to concerns over the tipping fee increase in the comment section of a post to Facebook on Wednesday, May 28.
There are a lot of reasons. First and foremost, nothing has changed for anyone who wants to have a dump sticker. The increase is only for the commercial haulers. We are taking in trash from these haulers from other counties at astronomical rates. Our trash has increased 26% and at that rate we will not have much of a landfill left until we expand. The biggest problem is that the prices stayed so low for so long for political posturing as opposed to actually looking out for the county and its residents as to where to dump their trash. We have told the haulers to redo their routes if this causes a huge issue and their final stop could be Worcester County landfill as opposed to Wicomico County. What’s even more frustrating is that these haulers were made aware that there would be price increases last year and also at their biannual Haulers meeting which occurred six months ago. We really didn’t have an idea of the price until we turned in the budget on April 15.
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