Installation of the liner at the Cache Creek landfill extension has been delayed, and the extension is not expected to open until the summer of 2019, according to Russ Black, president of Belkorp Environmental Services (Belkorp is the parent company of Wastech, which operates the landfill).
Earlier this year, Black told The Journal that the hope was for the extension to be open by October 2018.
“We’ve made great progress with the construction [of the extension] this year,” Black says, “but we’ve decided to hold off until spring 2019. We’ve been hit by some rain events that have affected the existing landfill and caused huge problems.”
READ MORE: Work on Cache Creek landfill extension liner to start soon
Black says that about five square kilometres of land adjacent to the old landfill were burnt by the Elephant Hill wildfire last year, and that is causing havoc.
“There’s no vegetation, there’s no retention. We’re getting a lot of sediment load and debris plugging up our systems, and we’re having to dig them out and repair them. We’re now looking at potentially having to redesign some aspects of the diversion.”
Black says that the landfill extension site has not been affected by the recent rains. “There’s a ridge above it, and all the hillside right up to the cellphone towers comes down along this ridge above the extension and then hooks around and comes out at the old landfill site.
“We have two big creek diversion systems that have never been a problem. They’ve operated extremely well over the years, but the three significant rain events we’ve had have totally overwhelmed them.
“We’ve diverted some of our resources to the old landfill site, to repair and get the creek diversion systems operating again.”
Belkorp intends to continue with the project, says Black “We’ve put an incredible amount of work into it. We’re not stopping. This is a minor delay. [The site] is ready to go.
“We were going at a nice pace, but unfortunately things happen, so we’ve diverted our resources while we try to deal with [the rainfall].”
He adds, however, that some work is continuing at the extension site, mainly on groundwater pipes underneath the liner, primarly to ensure the site remains in a protected state.
“We’ve got the site nicely prepared, and we’re just doing some work to make sure we stay in a protected state. We don’t want water building up. We want to make sure it passes through and into the diversion systems.
“When rain falls in that area we want to make sure it doesn’t create any pressure on the newly constructed berms.”
Black says that the methane plant at the site is still running, and should continue operating for another 20 years. “The gas starts to taper off after that.”
Power generated at the plant goes into the grid, but as it generates more power than the local area requires it’s sent to Hydro’s regional grid. “We have a power purchase agreement which gives us a return on the investment.”
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