BRIGHAM CITY — Box Elder County commissioners voted Tuesday to withdraw from the Northern Utah Regional Landfill Authority, the multicounty agency tasked with finding a home for northern Utah's trash.

Landfill discussions in Box Elder County have carried a negative tone in recent years, but commissioners now have an option that could turn the conversation in a new direction.

The Northwestern Band of Shoshone purchased the landfill in Promontory and is moving ahead with plans to operate that facility. According to Michael Devine, the chief operating officer, the tribe believes it can take in all the trash along the Wasatch Front for 100 years while minimizing the size of the landfill.

Every action taken by the Northwestern Band's economic development corporation has two primary objectives, Devine said.

"It does not matter how profitable (it) is if it does not renew our tribe," he said. "If it does not sustain and renew our tribe, it is not worth doing."

In Promontory, the Shoshone will use trash to generate energy. While the tribe remains mum on the details, Devine said it will use European technology to superheat trash and create an environmentally friendly source of energy.

"Garbage is the only stuff they pay you to take, and there's always enough," he said.

In addition to hauling trash to the landfill, the Shoshone will transport rock products out, improving the tribe's cost efficiency by trucking product both directions.

While is would be a profitable venture for the Shoshone, it is still the ability to renew and sustain that remains most important. Not only can the tribe create energy, it can do it for years to come without making the landfill bigger than it is already. In fact, the tribal leaders say that over time, it will actually be smaller. And they believe they can do the same at the Little Mountain landfill, an area they consider sacred ground.

The Northwestern Band of Shoshone once roamed the area from Point of the Mountain north to the Snake River Valley, and from the Promontory Mountains to Cache Valley. In 1863, a gathering for the Warm Dance near present-day Preston, Idaho, turned disastrous when much of the tribe was massacred there.

Now, almost 150 years later, the band has regrouped. With the formation of its economic development corporation, the Shoshone utilize the same features of the land that once sustained their ancestors to renew the tribe's presence today.

One recent example is the groundbreaking of Shoshone Renaissance where the tribe will drill into the earth to access naturally occurring heat and convert it into a source of renewable energy.

In February, the Northern Utah Regional Landfill Authority formally asked Box Elder County to develop a proposal in the best interest of the county and the landfill authority. If the county's intention was to offer a lease option, then it was to come up with terms voters could be comfortable with.

Commissioners have held two meetings in the last month where they hoped to gain input on that possibility. Instead, they discovered that there are still people adamantly opposed to anything the authority does.

The county's withdrawal from the landfill authority leaves the door open for negotiations with the Northwestern Band of Shoshone, although no formal plans have been announced.

E-MAIL: amy@benewsjournal.com