A recently approved lateral expansion of Delaware County’s landfill will guarantee its continued operation for at least another three generations. A variance granted to the Delaware County Solid Waste Management Facility earlier this month by the New York state Department of Environmental Conservation will add another 40 to 60 years’ capacity to the landfill. “We’re going a little bit horizontally so we can go a lot vertically,” county Public Works Commissioner Sue McIntyre told the Delaware County Board of Supervisors when she shared the good news at its August meeting.
The contents of the oldest landfill segment, Cell One, will be excavated and relocated into a subcell adjacent to Cell Four in what is technically known as a reclamation process, according to McIntyre. Cell One, original to the Walton facility’s 1977 establishment, contains no liner system to protect the earth beneath the landfill from the refuse packed in it. “It’s our greatest environmental exposure,” McIntyre said. “We’re going to get that waste in containment and be able to redevelop that area.”
A composite double-liner and leachate collection system — designed to siphon out the water that naturally percolates through the mound of garbage — will be installed in Cell One, bringing the landfill unit up to contemporary environmental standards and allowing for it to be filled again with new waste, McIntyre said.