Town continues work on landfill closure process

Moorcroft’s landfill has been closed for several months. However, the cost of the mandated cease and transfer has still to be counted.

Heath Turbiville of HDR Engineering reported at a recent meeting of the council that his company had sent to the state the necessary application for 85% grant funding with the remaining 15% a loan by the town.

Currently, the facility is shut down to all household garbage and the solid waste services that pick up the municipal waste in the area transports to the landfill of their choice so the town does not transfer from the landfill. Public Works Director Cory Allison says this will remain in place, though the council has not made that a formal decision as of the time of this article.

According to Allison, the town has yet to decide the future of the construction and demolition (C&D) pit, the only facet of the facility remaining open:

“We’re at the end of our permit on the pit we have right now; that means we have to do something different, whether we have to build a pit for C&D or we close the whole landfill down.”

The director explained the funding is for the closure of one or all facets of the facility. The town is at the end of the decision-making process, Allison noted. “[DEQ] are pushing us kind of hard,” he says.

Allison hopes to have more answers in the near future, but for the present, “We don’t have a lot of answers because we haven’t made any decisions yet so we’re just in limbo right now…We have to see if we can afford to keep [the C&D pit] open, it costs a lot of money and if we can’t at least break even, there’s no reason to do it.”