Amador has one public facility, and it's the only county of the four where the published price per cubic yard is out in the open — which makes it the easiest place to work out whether hauling it yourself is actually worth your morning. It also refuses a few things outright that catch people with old fencing and big stumps.
The Buena Vista Transfer Station, 6500 Buena Vista Road, Ione. Open seven days a week, with the county waste department reachable on (209) 223-6429. Jackson, Sutter Creek, Plymouth, Pine Grove — everything comes here. There are periodic closures for maintenance, so if you're driving any distance it's worth checking their calendar first.
This is the detail that catches people. From the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November the station runs 9am to 5pm. The rest of the year it's 8:30am to 4:30pm. Same days, different clock, and the switch is keyed to specific Sundays rather than a date you'd remember. Turn up at 4:45pm in December and you're going home with a full trailer.
A broad list, and better than people expect: aluminum cans, clean foil and containers, cardboard and clean paper, oil and oil filters, plastic bottles, jugs and jars, televisions, monitors, computers and microwaves, tires, furniture and bulky items, small animals under a hundred pounds, clean stumps up to 24 inches across, and clean mattresses and box springs — up to four.
Amador publishes what most counties don't: wood and yard waste is half a cubic yard free, then $29.25 per cubic yard after that. Half a yard is roughly a large wheelbarrow — nothing, in defensible space terms. A single afternoon of brush clearing runs to several yards, so the tipping fee alone on a genuine clearing job lands somewhere in the low hundreds before you've counted your fuel, your Saturday, or the trailer you had to borrow.
No hazardous waste at the regular gate, which means paint, pesticides, automotive batteries, household cleaners, pool chemicals, needles and aerosol cans that aren't empty. Also refused, and this is the part that surprises people: railroad ties, tree stumps over 24 inches across, and ashes. Old fencing and landscape timber made from treated ties has to go somewhere else entirely, and so does anything you've just felled that's bigger than a dinner plate at the base.
Out of county. Kiefer Landfill in Sacramento County accepts treated wood including railroad ties and fence posts, and the Western Regional Landfill in Placer takes treated railroad ties too. Both are a serious drive from Jackson or Pine Grove for a load of old fencing. This is one of the few cases where the arithmetic tips almost immediately — by the time you've spent two hours each way, the haul was never the cheap option.
Amador doesn't run a permanent hazardous waste facility. Collection happens at the same Buena Vista site on the first and third Saturday of each month, 9am to 1pm. Two four-hour windows a month, and no junk removal service in California — mine included — can legally take this material for you. For details on what's accepted, call Republic Services on (209) 274-2237 or the county's solid waste line on (209) 223-6429 before you load the car.
Buena Vista takes mattresses and box springs, but they have to be clean and the limit is four. That's fine for a house move and no use at all for a rental turnover or a property clearance, where six or eight is normal. California also runs a statewide mattress recycling program with free drop-off at participating sites, and retailers are required to take the old one when they deliver a new one — worth asking before you pay anyone.
Amador is the one county where you can actually compare like for like, because the yard rate is published. At $29.25 a cubic yard for green waste, a four-yard brush pile is about $117 in tipping fees before you've moved it. My trailer holds twelve cubic yards, my minimum is $165, and that number includes the loading, the driving and the sorting. I'd rather you ran that comparison than take my word for it — for a small load you'll be better off going yourself, and for a real clearing job you almost certainly won't.
Half a wheelbarrow of clippings and a free morning — take it to Ione yourself. Call me when the pile is measured in yards rather than bags, when it's railroad ties or oversized stumps that Buena Vista won't accept at any price, when there are more than four mattresses, when it's upstairs or heavy, or when the seasonal hours and the two-Saturdays-a-month hazardous window mean the job would otherwise take you a month. Firm total before anything is loaded, and I sort out which material goes where.
Compiled 14 September 2026 from ACES Waste Services' Buena Vista Transfer Station page and Amador County's household hazardous waste page, with the cross-county notes drawn from Sacramento County and Western Placer's own facility listings. The $29.25 yard rate was published at the time of writing — rates change, so treat it as an order of magnitude rather than a quote. If anything here is out of date, tell me and I'll correct it.
Send a photo and your location. Jackson, Sutter Creek, Plymouth, Ione and Pine Grove — firm total before anything moves.
