Another building owned by Flathead County will soon hit the auction block.

County commissioners agreed to sell a house that sits on landfill property.

The house was acquired by the Solid Waste District last December when the district bought 25.66 acres next to the landfill from Mountain West Bank for future landfill expansion.

People were renting the house when the solid waste district bought it and their rent contract was amended to require that they move out by the end of June. Now that the house is vacant, county Public Works Director Dave Prunty recommended it be sold at an auction.

The 2,200-square foot house will have to be moved as part of the sale agreement.

The house must be appraised to determine the minimum acceptable bid before the auction will be held, Prunty said. No date for that public auction has been set.

If no one buys the house, the district intends to tear it down.

Prunty told county commissioners that he has received responses from 14 of the 15 property owners near the landfill who have been asked about their willingness to sell their property to the solid waste district for future landfill expansion.

Twelve of the 14 indicated they were interested in possibly selling their land or selling and maintaining an option to lease it back from the district for some time before being required to move. Two respondents said they do not want to sell to the district.

“Fourteen responses, I’m tickled about that,” Prunty said.

The Solid Waste Board now intends to have appraisals conducted on the 12 properties whose owners indicated an interest in selling, Prunty said.

One property the district is interested in purchasing is a 571-acre parcel owned by one family that is interested in selling. That land is across Prairie View Road from the existing landfill and would require construction of new infrastructure, including roads, a weigh station and office buildings, and a variety of tests related to soils and groundwater before it could be used to bury garbage.

Preliminary work would have to occur to determine if the land could become certified as a landfill before any purchase offer would be made, Prunty said.

The other option under consideration by the board involves 91 acres, owned by 14 different people adjacent to the existing landfill.

While acknowledging the difficulties with reaching agreements with 14 property owners versus one, board members and Prunty point out that they already know the geology of the 91 acres and no infrastructure would have to be built to develop that area as a landfill.

On another solid waste issue, the relocation of the Olney container site continues, Prunty said.

The Solid Waste District has leased land from the state for that site but must have all the garbage containers on land owned by the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, which will require some minimal relocation of the containers. A new entrance will be created. An access road has be built and drainage addressed before the containers will be moved.

The site is about 3.5 miles south of Olney on U.S. 93 in an old Montana Department of Transportation gravel pit.

The plan is to have that project completed by October, Prunty said.

Board members continue to address consolidating container sites, he said.

Next on the list to review is closing the Bigfork container site.

While no formal action has been taken by the board, “we believe it is the next phase of our container site operations plan so we can continue to run solid waste operations in the county as long as possible,” he said.

The Bigfork site is located in the transportation department’s right of way and some safety concerns exist there because of the limited space available to the district.

Although the 6 inches of rain that hit the valley in June resulted in some muddy conditions at the landfill, operations continued in a normal fashion, Prunty said. Landfill workers used more sawdust and mulch on roads “to get people in and out of the landfill,” he said.

The volume of trash hauled to the landfill in May was up 4.6 percent compared to May 2011, Prunty said, but the amount of trash hauled to the landfill from container sites decreased by 10 percent.

Reporter Shelley Ridenour may be reached at 758-4439 or sridenour@dailyinterlake.com.