King County, Wash. Executive Ron Sims has announced plans to assess $7 million in annual rent payments from the county's landfill, and also to establish a county-owned transfer station. Sims recently had discovered through a property-title search that the county, not the county's solid-waste division, owns the Cedar Hills regional landfill near Renton. Even though the solid-waste division is part of county government, Wilkins explained that, legally, they are separate entities and that state law requires payment at fair rental value. A commercial real-estate firm calculated the rental value of the landfill property at $7 million per year (with an annual escalator) based on the disposal income stream, as long as the landfill is operating. That means the county should have charged the division rent for use of the landfill since 1992, and that after the landfill closes in 2012, it will owe those payments for back rent for the 1992-2003 period. In addition, under a pair of contracts totaling $310,000, the county's solid-waste division has hired HDR Engineering of Omaha, Neb., to help devise a business plan by May to establish a transfer station.