Two Columbus landfill cells will have their height limit raised pending approval from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality.
City councilmen gave engineering consultant Kevin Stafford the OK Tuesday to submit a permit to MDEQ to extend the vertical limit to 315 feet for one cell and to 285 feet for another. The previous permitted elevation was 268 feet.
Stafford said the decision should provide more than five years of extra overall cell life. One requirement will be to move some soil that spilled outside the permitted boundary back into one of the two cells to meet MDEQ guidelines and come back within compliance.
Cell one spans 7 acres while the permitted area of cell two spans just over 16. There is about 3.4 acres of rubbish outside the periphery of cell two’s permitted area that will have to be moved back in.
Stafford said cell one still had permitted life in it before council approved raising the ceiling, but cell two was almost out of room. He said he will submit the permit to MDEQ in the next 30 days and expects to have formal approval in three months.
The Columbus landfill is located on Armstrong Road.
Nathan Gregory covers city and county government for The Dispatch.
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