The Town of Babylon is preparing to close one of its two ash landfills and the second repository will be filled within seven years, leaving the town searching for a new home and uses for its incinerated garbage.
Town waste is burned at its Covanta waste-to-energy facility in West Babylon and the result is tons of ash that is placed inside ashfills. The Babylon Town board last month approved the hiring of Kosuri Engineering & Consulting PC of New Hyde Park for $462,350 for the engineering, design, and other work to close the town’s northern ashfill.
The process of capping and closing the 11.25 acre, 150-foot tall ashfill is long and costs an estimated $10 million, said Tom Vetri, commissioner of environmental control. A “membrane” of high density polyethylene must be placed over the ashfill so that it is impermeable to weather, then two feet of protective cover soil is placed on top of that, and then a vegetative cover. The ashfill is also contoured so that stormwater is collected in trenches that run to the stormwater collection system and pumped out to the Bergen Point Wastewater Treatment plant. “We want it engineered to the point that it will last,” he said.