New York town prepares to close its ash landfill, looks for alternatives

The Town of Babylon, New York, 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 waste.

As reported by Newsday, the town’s waste is burned at its Covanta waste-to-energy (WTE) facility in West Babylon. The Babylon Town board last month approved the hiring of Kosuri Engineering & Consulting PC of New Hyde Park, New York, 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, Tom Vetri, commissioner of environmental control, told Newsday.

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,” Vetri said.