Measure that could block divisive Kansas City landfill proposal passes Missouri House

The Missouri House on Thursday passed a bill that would effectively lay waste to a controversial south Kansas City landfill proposal amid a strong lobbying effort inside the state Capitol.

The bill, filed by Rep. Mike Haffner, a Pleasant Hill Republican, requires that cities within one mile of a landfill built in a nearby city be allowed to sign off before a project is approved. The current buffer is half a mile, giving surrounding cities little sway over the project.

Haffner’s bill faced some backlash from both parties but still received widespread support, passing the House on a vote of 112 to 30. It now heads to the Senate, where lawmakers have filed two similar bills.

The legislation specifically targets landfill projects near Kansas City and would apply only to proposals intended to serve cities with populations more than 400,000 people.

Thursday’s vote comes after residents in Raymore, Belton, Grandview and Lee’s Summit have for months condemned the proposed landfill, arguing the project would hurt the health of their neighbors and property values.

“The need for this bill isn’t about a landfill,” Haffner said Thursday. “It’s about a broken process that unfairly hurts Missourians, their livelihoods, their homes and their property values.”

The hypothetical site of the landfill would be near the high-end Creekmoor golf course community, bordering 147th Street to the north, Horridge Road to the east, 155th Street to the south and Peterson Road to the west.

The landfill project is spearheaded by local businesswoman Jennifer Monheiser with KC Recycle & Waste Solutions, which has hired 19 lobbyists since last year to oppose the legislation.

Opponents of the landfill, for their part, have created a political action committee called “Kill the Fill.” The group has hired seven lobbyists to support the legislation since last September, including Steve Tilley, a former Republican House speaker who has become a powerful lobbyist.

Monheiser told lawmakers in January that the project was an answer to concerns that, as Kansas City grows, it’s running out of space for residents to dispose of their waste.

Opponents of the legislation on argued that it unfairly targeted the property rights of the developers of the proposed landfill and that the state should not get involved in a local issue.

“This is weaponizing state law against two individuals that have not yet had due process,” said Rep. Jim Murphy, a St. Louis area Republican. “This isn’t about a landfill. It’s whether or not we’re going to trample on the rights of people not to have due process … Don’t go down this road. Because it can happen to you.”

Haffner called Murphy’s comments “absurd,” pointing to the lobbying effort from the developers of the project.

“These individuals on the landfill have refused to get involved in the permit process, yet they continue to hire lobbyists to lobby this chamber,” he said. “This is absolutely about due process. It’s absolutely about property rights. And it affects tens of thousands of households.”

The vote against the landfill project marked the issue’s return to Jefferson City after a dispute over the project ground the state Senate to a halt last year.

The dispute became a flashpoint near the end of last year’s legislative session amid filibusters from senators in the St. Louis area who argued, in part, that it should be a local issue. Sen. Rick Rick Brattin, a Harrisonville Republican who filed a version of the legislation, then launched a filibuster of his own in an attempt to force lawmakers to take up the bill.

Brattin ultimately sat down after money was placed in the state budget for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources to study possible effects of a landfill. However, Republican Gov. Mike Parson later vetoed that provision.

The Kansas City Council later agreed to halt all approvals of landfill proposals until June 2024 after Mayor Quinton Lucas met with state senators about the issue.