The question of a new landfill has proved especially contentious in Moose Jaw, with concerns about smells, wind-blown debris, and land values leading to a June 18 vote by the Rural Municipality of Moose Jaw 161 to reject the City of Moose Jaw’s Solid Waste Disposal Facility discretionary use application.
In response to that rejection, City Manager Maryse Carmichael said that “Securing a location for a new facility is critical because the ability to safely manage waste at our existing landfill decreases every year. We are currently reviewing options on how to move forward.”
The city is eager to move forward as quickly as possible to complete construction on a new solid waste facility before the current location becomes unusable.
But what will that new construction involve? How have landfill technologies changed, and how will a new facility be different? Discover Moose Jaw spoke with Bevan Harlton, director of operations, and engineer Mark Parker to answer these questions. Parker is a solid waste management consultant with GHD.
“Over the past couple of decades, there’s been major strides in the engineering of these facilities, particularly in environmental protection,” Parker explained. “There’s more stringent regulations on how these facilities are sited, how these facilities are constructed, and how they’re operated and then monitored on an ongoing basis.”
Parker said the new facility would be “highly engineered”, particularly when it comes to separating different materials before they are stored. Plans would include at least 15 ‘cells’. These cells are isolated from each other and the surrounding earth and closed progressively.
Each cell should last about five years. Cells are used so that operators can limit surface area. The cells are initially excavated below grade. That means the ground needs to be rigorously surveyed before construction begins — groundwater, bedrock depth, soil composition, and more must be appropriate to the use.
“So these sites, as they’re developed into ‘airspace’, instead of having an open working area that’s really large, in a modern facility the open working area is kept as small as operationally possible. And then, as areas reach their final capacity, cover is placed, so instead of just closing it all at the end, it’s closed progressively ... a cap is put on and vegetation is re-established.
“The landfill cells themselves must be lined, typically that’s with a composite liner. So, not only a clay liner, but overlaying by a geosynthetic liner over top, which is typically high-density polyethylene. Leachate must be monitored and collected and pumped out, to not accumulate at the bottom of these cells,” Parker continued. “That leachate must be treated and/or disposed at an approved facility.”
In terms of controlling the spread of debris, a new landfill would follow an operations plan specifically designed to limit any chance of that happening. Landfill operators layer dirt over litter every night, with thicker, intermediate layers added regularly.
“Landfill gas, leachate, surface water — all of these things are monitored and tested and reported on, on an ongoing basis,” Parker said.
The engineering design and plan for operation is reviewed by a regulator, and the owner of the landfill must follow the prescribed conditions. Environmental monitoring systems are reported on annually.
The landfill supervisor is primarily responsible to ensure the operations plan is being followed, while environment systems are checked by an external consultant.
“It’s largely water management,” Harlton explained. “The facility is set up in a way to keep the external water out and to collect the internal water and store it independently. ... What we’ve included in our design is a 100-meter buffer around the location ... a third of the land is dedicated to that buffer.
“We don’t want the public to consider a future facility in the same reference as the landfill we’re operating right now. They are night and day.”
“I’ve dedicated my career, and others have, as well, to the protection of the environment from these facilities,” Parker added. “The old vernacular of calling them ‘dumps’ does not accurately reflecting what these new facilities look like. They are highly engineered.”