Landfill closure efforts a major topic at Battleford town hall meeting

The old Battleford landfill was a major topic at Battleford council on Tuesday night.

In particular, council is continuing efforts towards formalizing the closure of their old landfill, which was taken out of service in 2002-03.

The intention is to eventually present a formal landfill closure plan to the province. Right now, the town is in the middle of a three-stage consulting process towards that goal.

The town is now partway through that process. Council was presented results of the first stage of consulting done at the landfill this year, and they have now given their go-ahead to moving ahead with the second stage — a topological survey of the landfill and a slope stability analysis, for $49,446.

That second stage will be taking place this fall with a report likely to be done in November.

At Tuesday’s meeting, acting chief administrative officer David Gillan filled in councillors on the status of what was happening.

Earlier this year, the town had contacted the firm P. Machibroda Engineering to give them a proposal to get them to a final report they could take to the province. Gillan said that in May a three stage approach was suggested.

The first stage was testing of the leachate that runs under the landfill and surrounding area to see if it was affected. The second stage is to study modifications required to the cover that is now on top of the landfill to ensure the water is dispersing appropriately, as well as look at slope stability. The final stage was to take all the information and present it to the province as their closure plan. This plan, according to Gillan, would include testing they would do over the next 15 years.

“We’ve already had 17 years of closure, we are just now formalizing this whole process,” Gillan said.

In early June, council approved going ahead with stage one of consulting for the leachate testing. On Tuesday, council got that full consulting report.

Gillan said the results were “encouraging,” but there were gaps in the data. A number of wells drilled in 2003 had gone missing, and Gillan said the key ones they couldn’t find were right on top of the landfill cell. As for those wells that were found, most were fixed and could function, but some could not.

Testing was carried out on the functioning wells and compared to 2003; some samples from the Battle River were also taken.

The decision was made at council Tuesday to proceed with stage two at a cost of $49,446. This stage will include doing the topological survey and riverbank slope stability analysis. Gillan said there was a need for some new monitoring wells. Sampling and testing from the new wells would also need to be done.

The last stage, stage three, would still have to come back to council for approval. This would also involve doing the actual landfill cover remediation and riverbank sloping remediation. The estimated cost will depend on the results of the stage two findings once those are in.

The landfill closure consulting is being funded by reserves; the town has a reserve of $155,725 set aside towards the entire landfill closure and the indication from Gillan is they were financially on track.