Landfill cell officially closed

Cell one at the old Delano Landfill is officially closed.

All four towns that participated in the landfill, Electric City, Grand Coulee, Coulee Dam and Elmer City, have approved final closure of the seven-acre garbage landfill.

Final closure, placing cover material over the landfill was completed a year ago, with minor additional work this year by Halme Construction of Davenport. Then the issue went to the four municipalities that jointly own the landfill project for approval.

While covering the landfill is complete, the issue of monitoring the wells on the landfill, continues, by law, for 30 years.

The Cell One facility has been receiving solid wastes since the late 1980s.

The Regional Board of Mayors recently approved a $19,528 annual contract with URS, a Seattle engineering firm, for making quarterly monitoring reports on the landfill. URS will make quarterly reports of the landfill to the Department of Ecology and Grant County Health District.

Mayors were told recently that the monitoring reports show a very low level of gases and ground water contamination and that levels have been continuously decreasing since the 30-year monitoring reports started.

That prompted Electric City Mayor Jerry Sands to ask, if the levels are decreasing, then might the DOE and health district agree to monitoring the landfill just three times a year which would cut costs. Later, Sands stated, if reports continue to show low levels, then perhaps agencies could be persuaded to accept twice-a-year reports.

Sands said last week that the Department of Ecology seemed receptive to less frequent reports, but didn’t think anything would change for a year or two. In addition to the URS charge for doing the reports, the Regional Board of Mayors pay about $3,500 a quarter to test water samples taken from the landfill wells.

“I think we can get the monitoring costs down to the low $20,000 figure if our reports continue to be good,” Sands stated.