photo by: Mike Yoder

The Hamm Waste Services landfill north of Lawrence is pictured in this file photo from 2007.

Hamm Companies, which for decades has run the landfill that serves Lawrence, plans to sell that landfill to a large nationwide waste disposal company, and the City of Lawrence is being asked to consent to the sale.

In a letter Hamm sent to the city and county, dated Dec. 10, Hamm said it would be selling the Hamm Landfill and Hamm Material Recovery Facility, which processes recycling, to a company called Allied Waste Systems Inc. The sale is expected to take place sometime in February, and Douglas County already consented to the sale.

The reason the city and county have to consent is because the sale includes their contracts for service with Hamm. The City of Lawrence has two agreements with Hamm for use of the landfill and for recycling services, which among other things spell out the rates the city pays. Both agreements can’t be assigned to another party without written consent, which “shall not be unreasonably withheld or delayed.”

On Tuesday, the Lawrence City Commission will vote on whether to authorize City Manager Craig Owens to sign letters of consent to the sale.

The city’s contract for landfill services with Hamm has been in place since December 1992 and has had two updates since then, in 2010 and 2019. It renews automatically each year, and either party can terminate it by providing six months’ notice.

The city has contracted for recycling services with Hamm since April 2013, and its current agreement for these services was approved in October 2022. It is structured around five-year terms, so the first would end in 2027. After that, it can be extended for up to two more five-year terms. Each one automatically begins after the previous one ends, unless one of the parties gives at least six months’ notice that it doesn’t intend to renew.

The company Hamm is selling the facilities to, Allied Waste Systems, is a subsidiary of a nationwide company called Republic Services, which operates hundreds of waste disposal facilities across the U.S. It doesn’t seem to have much of a presence in Kansas, however. Aside from a hauling facility in Kansas City, Kansas, a map on Republic’s website shows that its nearest facility to Lawrence is the Courtney Ridge Landfill just north of Independence, Missouri.

The landfill and recycling facility aren’t the only parts of Hamm’s operations. The company is also a player in the construction industry and operates a number of quarries in northeast Kansas.

The Journal-World reached out to a Hamm official to seek more information about the reasons for the sale and to ask whether the company planned to sell any other facilities or parts of its business. As of 4 p.m. Friday, the Journal-World had not received a response to its questions.