CITY STILL CLOSING LID ON FORMER LANDFILL
Draft EIR has been prepared
The Ukiah City Council recently approved spending another $ 400,000 in its now 20-year-long effort to close the lid on its former landfill at the end of Vichy Springs Road.
“A lot of you have been lucky enough to not have been involved too much in the landfill, but that day, unfortunately, is coming to an end, because we’re gonna have to close this thing,” PublicWorks Director TimEriksen told the Ukiah City Council at its last meeting inwhich staff was requesting another amendment be made to the contract with the firmfirst hired to steer the closure process back in 1999,
EBA Engineering.
“In the late 1990swewere coming to a place where the landfill was at capacity and we had to comeupwith a newoption for our waste, whichwas to build the new transfer station,” said Eriksen, explaining thatwhile garbage hasn’t been accepted at the landfill since 1999, “it’s not a closed facility in the eyes of CalRecycle (because it needs a cap and a gas collection system.)”
Though city staff members have been working on officially closing the landfill formore than 20 years now, “there are many different reasons why it hasn’t happened yet,” Eriksen said, pointing to “technology changes, a lot of regulatory issues” and lawsuits as some of them.
Funding is yet another issue, but Eriksen explained that “while we’re about $1 million short (of the needed $11 million),” the council in 2017 voted to “increase the tipping fee at the Transfer Stationto close that gap. So we have the funding, we have a design done to close it, and last year we started the process with state agencies to actually close the landfill.”
However, Eriksen said when the city got challenged on its process regarding environmental review, “we decidedwewould do a full environmental impact review (EIR). Now, the EIR is done, the draft EIR has been sent out, and we are addressing comments, including those in a very lengthy letter from our neighbor’s attorney. Then hopefully the EIR will come back to the council and be certified.”
In the meantime, Eriksen said that certain tasks that still need to be completed by EBA
were not included in the original contract, and he was asking the City Council to approve an additional $411,411, bringing the contract with the firm to a total of $642,722. There were no comments from the public on this item and it was approved by the council.
The Ukiah Valley Trail
Group has been working on creating a new trail on city property surrounding the landfill, but Director Neil Davis said recently that the city put that work on hold until the landfill is officially closed.