The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality will spend up to $3.4 million to install a leachate collection system and repair a ruptured cap on the C&L Landfill in Fayetteville this summer, in time for the city to continue constructing a park around and on top of the landfill in the fall.
The current cap atop the landfill has eroded, causing waste to protrude through the surface, Benjamin Jones told the Pollution Control and Ecology Commission on Thursday. Jones is chief of the Solid Waste Management Division for the Environmental Quality Department.
The commission later approved the expenditure.
C&L Landfill was closed in 1976 but has been a source of environmental concerns since. In 2010, the landfill was the first in the state to receive Landfill Post-Closure Trust funds, which were established by the Arkansas Legislature in 1991.
At the time, $1.5 million was spent from the fund to place a cap on C&L Landfill.
This spring, workers completed the first phase of the landfill cap replacement after erosion led to waste appearing on the surface.
The second phase is projected to cost $2.8 million, and the $3.4 million spending limit is intended to cover any cost overruns.
The second phase will finish the replacement of the cap and install a leachate-collection system, which is a network of pipes that collects leachate from the layers of the landfill and moves it to a well, where it can be managed. Leachate refers to liquid produced by solid waste.
Fayetteville has long been planning a park in the area.
The city owns about 200 acres south and east of the landfill and about 360 acres west. The 33-acre landfill falls in the middle but would be included as a part of the park, so far dubbed the Fayetteville Regional Park.
Alison Jumper, the Fayetteville park planning superintendent, said she doesn't know what might be built on the park.
The Environmental Quality Department has restrictions on what can be built over the landfill, namely prohibiting anything that would puncture the new cap.
"We do have to follow their regulations," Jumper said. "So we'll just have to let them guide us."
The space over the landfill may be used as a greenspace with no structures on top of it, Jumper said.
How it would be maintained afterward is unclear, Jumper said, but someone will monitor it.
Jones said a park over a landfill wouldn't pose health risks.
"I think it's a good use of space," he said. "Obviously you can't do anything that's going to disturb the cap."
The Landfill Post-Closure Trust fund is built up through $1 fees from landfills each time waste is disposed of in the state or taken from the state elsewhere for disposal.
The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality must receive commission approval before spending more than $2 million from the fund.
The fund has about $20 million in it but can't collect additional $1 fees until it drops below $15 million. It has a cap of $25 million. In the past when a fee was in place, Jones said, it generated about $3 million a year.
The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality has other landfill projects Jones said would not be affected by the $3.4 million set aside for C&L Landfill.
Metro on 05/22/2015