Another expenditure is upcoming for Mississippi County -- the Quorum Court's Sanitation Committee met Thursday with a representative from its environmental consultant firm in Little Rock and learned that a new pumping system for leachate at the landfill must be purchased and installed as soon as possible.
According to the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, there are concerns about how leachate is extracted from some of the landfill cells. Leachate is the liquid which trickles down through the waste at a landfill cell and pools at the bottom. The amount of leachate is monitored by ADEQ because if it exceeds a limit, it could leak through the cell's liner system and cause contamination.
The pipelines for an automatic pumping system are already in place at 12 of the landfill cells, but the pumps themselves were never purchased or installed -- landfill workers have extracted the leachate with a vacuum truck or other means. ADEQ has said until the leachate pumping system is complete, the permit which the county needs to construct a new landfill cell will not be issued.
Paul Crawford of FTN Associates, the environmental consultants, told the committee that he believes the job can be done for $200,000, possibly less, and said he would get them a firm quote by June 16, when the Court's Finance Committee meets. The committee plans to have a response prepared for ADEQ with a timeline for the job by the end of the month, in hopes that this will speed up the permitting process for their new cell.
sharris@blythevillecourier.com