Agenda - Council - 02/12/1985 - Laserfiche WebLink

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The Landfill Component of the Development Schedule Should Encouroc~e LAbatemenl; While Reaiisticoll¥ Providing for Future Land Disposal Needs We support the basic concept of prohibiting the land disposal of unprocessed wastes once a regional system of processing and/or energy recovery facilities is available. Clarification of several items could strengthen the discussion on land disposal: I I I I The Methoclolocjy Used to Calculate the L..and Disl~.s. al Capacity Ceilinq A critical element of the Draft Plan is :jhe ceiling of 7~2Z15 acre-feet established for future landfill space up to the year 2000. A wide variety of estimates has been used in the determination of the ceiling figure, Including many data items with large margins of errors such as estimates of current commercial and industrial waste quantities and estimated future participation rates in source separation pregrams. The ceiling figure might be more readily understood and accepted if the Plan were to summc~ize all calculations and assumptions used to calculate the ceiling figure, and to show how the figure incorporated a margin of error to account for the inexact nature of many of the data items it is based on. I I I The Possibility That Landfill Inventory Sites May Be Lost Once the Plan is adopted~ inventory sites will be dropped for those counties which are not required to provide for new landfills by the year 2000. Should the Environmental Impact Statement for the landfill inventory of a county show that none of the sites are suitable~ it is not clear how the disposal needs required for that county would be met. The Plan could include a discussion regarding the availability of sites to provide for such a contingency. - How Landfillinq of Unprocessed Wastes for Interim or Emer_c~ency Situations Can Be Provided for But Controlled Some situations will undoubtedly exist in the future where it will be necessary to provide for temporary disposal of unprocessed wastes. The Draft Plan states that new land disposal facilities "would dispose of only processed residuals or special wastes". If legislation is enacted to implement the ban on landfilling of unprocessed wastes after 19~0, how the disposal of unprocessed wastes will be controlled at the proposed Anoka County landfill prior to 19~) is not clear. Also, even after a regional system of resource recovery facilities is in place, there will be occasions when disposal of unprocessed wastes is needed, such as for debris from natural disasters and for emergency situations where it is not possible for wastes to be processed at any resource recovery facility. The Plan could clarify how these situations would be addressed. Clarification is Needed Regarding Which Wastes Are to Be Manacled Because different legal requirements and management strategies exist for different types of wastes, it is critical that the types of wastes to be managed are defined as precisely as passible. A few terms appear to hove different definitions in different parts of the Draft Plan. For examples "municipal solid waste" in one citation encompasses various wastes including industrial and demolition wastes while in another citation is more narrowly defined to exclude industrial and demolition wastes. Clarification of the definitions of such terms could enhance the effectiveness of the Plan.