Faced with surging power bills, the Haines landfill is going off-grid

Community Waste Solutions General Manager Craig Franke said it should be cheaper to go fully off-grid than to rely on the local utility. (Avery Ellfeldt/KHNS)
Once a week, employees at the Haines landfill scoop mountains of trash into a machine that squashes it into gigantic cubes.
The baling process significantly reduces how much space the garbage occupies, solving a major real estate problem. But it also takes a lot of power, which historically has come from the local utility, Alaska Power and