Will not be required to truck leachate off-Island
NORTHEAST TOWN—It took 17 years of approvals, reports and studies, but the Northeast Town’s Highway 6 landfill site has finally been granted status as a ‘natural attenuation landfill,’ meaning taxpayers will not be faced with a massive cost to truck leachate from the site.
Leachate is the ‘garbage juice,’ the liquid created from the refuse. It must be monitored by the appropriate ministries. While the landfill, which was designed in the late 1990s, was created as a natural attenuation site, meaning the leachate could just be filtered into the ground, concerns from neighbours caused the Ministry of Environment to pull back that design and force the municipality to keep its leachate on-site, deeming the landfill an ‘attenuation zone.’ This was done through the creation of cells lined with clay, effectively clay bowls. The leachate sits in the clay bowls and is then pumped out and sprayed over the landfill site to help further evaporation.
CAO Dave Williamson noted this has worked very well over the years, but the leachate is now getting to the point that it will need to be removed by other means. A quote from the late 1990s showed that trucking the leachate to the closest landfill capable of handling it (leachate is deemed a hazardous waste), Sudbury, would cost the municipality $250,000 a year. That figure will have grown exponentially, Mr. Williamson shared.
In the years following the landfill’s opening the municipality purchased the nearby Mountainside Homes, closed and capped the well there and bought other adjoining properties. In 2006 they then applied to the Ministry of Natural Resources and asked that the landfill once again be declared a natural attenuation site and, 17 years later, they have been approved that status.
“This will save taxpayer money in the future,” Mr. Williamson told The Expositor.
The landfill will still have the required monitoring wells where the leachate is tested numerous time a year.
“This shows the perseverance of various councils toward moving to natural attenuation,” Mr. Williamson added. “The current council should be congratulated.”
