The city of Cheyanne, Wyoming, has announced plans to expand the Happy Jack landfill by adding eight new cells. As reported by Wyoming News Now, the project is designed to expand the landfill over a series of years—with the grand design estimating the landfill’s lifespan to exceed 45 years.
The landfill has been around since the 1960s, and the new cells will allow for more waste to be stored in the location over a longer period of time. With each cell, there can be an eighty-foot elevation drop from top to bottom.
Director of Public Works, Vicki Nemecek, said approximately 2,000,000 cubic yards of dirt and rock have been excavated.
Two cells have already been excavated, and the third will be partially excavated so the dirt from the third cell can fill one and two once they are full of waste. New cells will need to be excavated every 5 to 8 years, according to Nemecek. The current phase of the expansion is costing rate-payers $6 million for the excavation, and $500,000 more for the lining.
Nemecek told Wyoming News Now that although the project is costly, it is less expensive than transporting waste to Colorado landfills with an annual tipping fee of $1.2 million. She adds, because the project will last 45-50 years, the expansion is more economical.
“You have to have the revenue in order to build that next cell. So, we require, and state statute allows, the city to control waste within the city limits so that we can not only collect, but also dispose of your waste,” said Nemecek.
The process of lining the cells includes the layering of dirt, bentonite, geosynthetic liner and a final layer of sand to seal in the waste. The process ensures waste contamination does not seep into ground water.
Nemecek adds, the expansion has an environmentally-aware design. The landfill is surrounded by a 40-foot high litter fence, that contains loose litter on windy days. Three full-time litter pickers will also work around the clock to keep the landfill and surrounding areas clean.
“You may not realize it, you may not even think about it, but without a landfill, you have to think about other options of how you are going to dispose of your waste. So, when you have that Kleenex, or you have that waste from last night’s dinner that you have to scrape into the garbage, realize that we have a place for you to dispose of all of that for the next fifty years,” said Nemecek.