A 22-acre field at the Lycoming County Landfill will be going through a Phase I closure following approval by the county commissioners of a bid of $8,712,312 from R & L Development Company. The project is expected to take 16 months to complete.

“We’re going to take sections of our slope and put a liner system on top of it. That’s standard practice once you have areas of your landfill you have filled and you’re no longer going to put waste into it,” said Jason Yorks, director of the county’s Resource Management Services Department.

The cost includes other things besides the actual closure work.

“We’re adding six new wells into the landfill on the eastern slope along Route 15. There’s a ton of plumbing and pipework underground that we want to get fixed up and get ready so that when we put the closure over it we never have to touch it again,” Yorks said.

The reason for the 16-month timetable, according to Yorks, is because it is such a “massive project.”

“You’re talking a lot of soil has to go over it. The liner has to be welded and you also have to take into consideration we are going to have November, December, January, February and March. We’re going to have five-six months when you can’t get very much done. You can do some work, but you can’t put heavy equipment on frozen ground on a slope. When you run with dirt in PA, you have a construction season,” he added.

During the closure procedure, a liner goes over the field, soil is placed over that and finally grass is planted. Gas generated by decomposition is collected.

“As waste decomposes, it gives off several types of gas and you want to capture that and then you put a light vacuum on the whole landfill and the light vacuum pulls the gas out of the fields and puts it into Caterpillar engines and then they generate electricity.”

The reason for the 16-month timetable, Yorks said, is because it is such a “massive project.”

“You’re talking a lot of soil has to go over it,” he said. “The liner has to be welded, and you also have to take into consideration we aren’t going to have November, December, January, February and March.

“We’re going to have five-six months when you can’t get very much done. You can do some work, but you can’t put heavy equipment on frozen ground on a slope. When you run with dirt in Pa., you have a window, a construction season with it,” Yorks explained.

“You have to have gas collection and leachate collection in order to be compliant. You don’t want odors coming from a landfill. You don’t want liquids or any of that stuff. It is part of our permit and our requirement. That’s the same for all landfills,” he said.

Any time that rain penetrates or any time wet garbage is buried moisture will generally find a way out and collect and that becomes leachate.

There are 12 permitted fields. The landfill occupies 11 of them, and within two years, they expect to be using field 12, Yorks noted.

“When those are filled, there are areas near the current fields that RMS is looking to get permitted,” he said.

“We’re not going east of (Route) 15, like everybody says. We’ll always be on the west side of 15, where we’re at,” Yorks stressed.

The cost of the closure is covered through money that is set aside every time any tons of waste come in, money is put aside for closures. This has been done since the landfill was built.

“You’re required to do that,” Yorks said.”It’s a requirement from the Department of Environmental protection that you set money aside for the day that you have to do closure and then there’s money set aside for post-closure, for after that.”

“You are never done taking care of it. In the end, you’re ultimately just mowing grass. You know that you’re going to have to put it to bed,” he said.