And unto dust it shall return

SOUTH JORDAN — Piles of sawdust at the Trans-Jordan landfill are heaped up like mounds of gold as far as the eye can see.

In some areas of the country where the cost of sawdust is skyrocketing — and the material is quickly disappearing — those piles would bring a hefty profit. But here, they're waiting to be buried like the rest of the trash.

And it's not cheap.

"It costs me more to bury it than I'm getting right now," Trans-Jordan general manager Dwayne Woolley said. "Before, it was enough coming in that we could process it and get away with it. But now we have so much coming in that we can't do anything with it."

Woolley sells some of the sawdust to local folks, and he mixes some into a composting mixture that's also for sale, but he can't keep up with the 20 tons of sawdust the landfill receives every month. Woolley's been piling up excess mounds of the fine mixture for a couple of years now, but the landfill is running out of room, and the sawdust has to go somewhere. So it goes into the ground.

Elsewhere in the country, the price of sawdust is double what it was last year. According to Associated Press reports, dairy farmers and pellet manufacturers are paying up to $50 a ton for sawdust because new construction is lagging and energy costs are soaring.

Farmers in Vermont pay up to $1,800 for a truckload of sawdust, if they can find it. Some drive hundreds of miles to find the stuff to line stable floors or use as fuel. Here, most cabinetmakers give it away for free.

"It is — and it always has been — a pain in the neck," said Ross Staheli, a shop foreman for the Huetter Mill and Cabinet company in Salt Lake City. "If the sawdust isn't picked up it backs up in the hopper, and it shuts us down. Then I have to send the guys home. We have to have a source for that material to be taken out so we can keep running."

Having a reliable person — which, in most cases in Salt Lake County, turns out to be a farmer or rancher who collects the sawdust for composting — to take the substance away is worth giving it away for free, Staheli said.

Most local woodworking shops that produce substantial amounts of sawdust have made similar arrangements with farmers. But cabinetmaking giants like KraftMaid in West Jordan don't have the same option. KraftMaid, whose executives didn't return calls for this report, brings the Trans-Jordan landfill most of the sawdust it receives, and it's a big reason the landfill has maxed out its capacity for the tiny wood shavings in a short amount of time.

There are only so many farmers to go around, and there are plenty of smaller woodworkers in Salt Lake County that fill the need for sawdust.