Summit County Solid Waste Superintendent Tim Loveday is in charge of the county’s landfills.
On the Local News Hour, he said there was a spike in waste during the COVID-19 pandemic at Three Mile Landfill, the main repository of residential waste.
“So we are flat out of space,” Loveday said. “We're about two and a half months from having that cell full.”
It will take at least two years to build a second cell, a hole with a liner that protects surrounding soils and groundwater from potential contamination. As a stopgap, Loveday said the county will put waste in an older section of the landfill.
That section is not lined, but federal regulations allow it because the dump was built before the rules were updated to require liners on all dumping sites.
“In the east, we went to lined cells back in the early 90s. That was required by the EPA,” Loveday said. “But the west is much drier, so there was the thought that we didn't need to necessarily have a lined landfill because we just don't get that much water and infiltration. That turned out that's not exactly true.”
Located just above Rockport Reservoir, the older part of Three Mile was grandfathered in, and Loveday said the landfill monitors the surrounding groundwater.
“At Three Mile Canyon, we're surrounded by monitoring wells, and we monitor groundwater four times a year, and run statistical analysis to make sure that we're not impacting that groundwater,” he said. “ If it ever came up that we did, then we'd be looking at going into a corrective action situation.”
Once the new cell is completed, it will be backfilled with the waste accumulated at the temporary dump.
The earliest the second cell could be ready to go is 2026.
The county council will have to set aside the money during its next budgeting cycle this December. It decided not to fund a new cell in the last budgeting cycle to avoid raising taxes.
Loveday estimated the cost at $3 million and expects that number to rise, given materials costs and inflation.
