Whistler's dirty laundry - trash

Ron Judd discovered a big secret at Whistler-Blackcomb, the mountain resort in British Columbia. They export their trash.

Seattle Times Northwest Weekend

It's a little-known fact. When the world comes to the chic, environmentally conscious resort hamlet of Whistler-Blackcomb, which it will do increasingly for the 2010 Winter Olympics two years from now, it leaves quite a bit of stuff behind — some 18,000 metric tons of trash every year.

But not a scrap of that garbage finds its final resting place in Whistler. Nor does it just go down the hill to Squamish. Nor anywhere else in the Sea to Sky corridor.

Whistler's trash comes to Washington state. All of it. It has since 2005, when Whistler's small landfill, just outside of town, was filled and capped off, making way for the Olympic Athlete's Village now being constructed on top.

With bulldozers humming there, Whistler has opened a new transfer station in the Callaghan Valley, not far from the Olympic venue for cross-country skiing. There, trash is packed into sealed shipping containers to be hauled by truck to Surrey. The containers are stacked two-high on trains and hauled down the Interstate 5 corridor, up the Columbia River Gorge, to the massive Rabanco landfill at Roosevelt, east of Goldendale.

Goldendale, Washington - just east of the Columbia Gorge!