Trash transfer

Garbage headed for Delano Landfill may be directed to Ephrata landfill

GRAND COULEE DAM — The Delano Landfill is about 30 percent full, but the mayors of the four towns that use the site for dumping waste are already having to consider other options.

The mayors of Grand Coulee, Electric City, Coulee Dam and Elmer City met with two Grant County Commissioners on Monday to resolve the problem.

Residents in the Grand Coulee Dam area produce about 16,000 cubic yards of solid waste per year. Most of that streams in during the summer months when an influx of tourists come to see the dam. At the current rate, the first cell of the landfill will be full in about 18 months. Development of a second cell would be both modern in design and expensive. So expensive, in fact, that the Regional Board of Mayors told the county commissioners Monday that they can't afford to use the next cell.

Electric City Mayor Raymond R. Halsey first came to office about 30 years ago. That was about the same time that the Delano Landfill opened up.

"It surprised me that they wouldn't let us keep the arid design. They had OK'd it years back and then in the middle of the stream they decide no more arid designs," Halsey said. "If we didn't have to line the cells, we could go ahead and fill the landfill up."

Halsey said the area receives very little rainfall and the original arid design didn't require a liner at the bottom to protect the aquifer.

Federal and state environmental regulations being enforced by the Grant County Health District require future cells opened in Delano Landfill to have a high density polyethylene plastic liner. The high density plastic material is similar to what is used to make plastic bottles. The waterproof material protects soil underneath the landfill from coming into contact with water that has mixed with the garbage above it.

According to senior regulatory and technical assistance specialist Wayne Krafft, of the Washington state Department of Ecology, groundwater under a landfill is contaminated by rainwater and snow melt that filters through the waste and carries with it metals and solvents on the way down to the soil. Groundwater is also polluted from landfill gases such as methane and carbon dioxide that are produced when garbage sits over a portion of land for a period of time and eventually begins pushing those gases into spaces in the soil as pressure builds up.

"The contamination levels are significant," Krafft said. "As far as we know, there's no exposure, nobody drinking that water at this point."

Instead of issuing fines or enforcement actions, the DOE and GCHD require a solid waste disposal facility to take corrective action, Krafft said. He added that the facility is currently considered to be in compliance with environmental regulations because it was a transitional facility that was constructed under older rules in accordance with the requirements of that time.

"But if they were to expand, they would be required to have a liner system to prevent further groundwater contamination," Krafft said, adding that the plastic liners are expensive. "They are allowed to continue to operate until they meet the original design capacity, and that is what's coming up in the next year or two."

The Grand Coulee Dam area doesn't produce enough garbage to pay for the high cost of a plastic liner, Krafft said. Since the towns don't generate enough revenue from garbage collection to buy a plastic liner, town officials only have one viable option for their solid waste disposal.

"I see the four towns ending up with a transfer station and hauling it to Ephrata," Halsey said. "You can build a transfer station for about half what it costs to put in a lined cell."

Time is not on their side either, as the first of four cells at Delano Landfill will be full in approximately 18 months. That is exactly how much time they have to find funding for a transfer facility.

It will take about 60 to 90 days to set up a transfer station to begin hauling waste to Ephrata.

"I need answers from the people that lend money," Halsey said. "It's really at the planning stage and I can't tell which way it's going to go until I get some answers back from some people."

Cost is the number one factor in any future decision. Estimates range from $650,000 to $1 million dollars to set up the transfer operation, with very low costs to maintain.

To line a second cell at Delano Landfill would cost $1.5 million or more and town officials know they don't have enough money for that.

Grant County Commission Chair LeRoy Allison said the town officials should apply for the Strategic Infrastructure Program, which is state sales tax money that the county receives that can be used for economic development. Allison said that tourism in that area is high enough that it would have enough of an impact on business that it could be considered economic development.