Bannock County landfill expanding

You dig a hole to dump garbage in and that’s it right?

Wrong. There’s a whole lot more that goes on behind the scenes at landfills to keep them operating.

Crews have to make sure that moisture and possible contaminants from the garbage are not getting into groundwater.

“It starts out with a cushion layer just to kind of get everything set then there’s a clay GCL liner that’s made out of bentonite,” explained Kiel Burmester, the Bannock County public works assistant director. “Then we have an HDPE liner that goes on top of that that’s a high density polymer liner, which is the liner itself, and then we have a couple feet of sand to protect that liner. Right above that liner is a lychgate pipe which is an HDPE pipe that’s got holes drilled in it, and so that any water that percolates down through the waste, will hit that drainage layer and go into that pipe and it goes down to a pond where we can evaporate that.”

This week, crews at the Bannock County landfill are doing some expansion work and making more room at one of the waste cells.

“The trash just keeps coming in and so we’ve always got to be ahead of the game and we have more room,” Burmester said.

“As we go forward and the growth trends that are happening in Southeast Idaho, in Bannock County and Pocatello, we want to make sure we stay ahead of that curve,” said Bannock County commissioner Terrel Tovey. “We want to make sure as we start getting some of these subdivisions and housing and the Northgate project, we want to make sure we have the infrastructure available to where that is not something that will restrict the growth.”

But it is more than just expansion work the county is doing to help with the amount of waste.

“We do quite a bit of recycling up here to minimize the waste that is going on,” Burmester said. “We do glass, cardboard, tires, electronics, there’s a lot of recycling going on up here.”

They also have a few days where people can bring hazardous waste materials from home, like old cans of paint and oil, and dispose of them properly.

Tovey said the total cost for this project was around $2 million, which came from last year’s budget under capital expansion funding. He said the county looked at holding off the project for possibly another five or even seven years, but said by doing it now, it saves the county at least $300,000.

This expansion should give the cell another seven years of life before they would have to look at capacity and possibly expand again.