The town of Salina will receive a $5 million short-term loan to continue the effort to close the town’s landfill.
The board of directors for the Environmental Facilities Corporation (EFC) approved the low-interest loan late last week to help the town install a groundwater/landfill leachate collection system and pretreatment plant designed to remove mercury, PCBs and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The leachate collection system is comprised of approximately 1,040 linear feet of 1.5-inch HDPE force main, 850 linear feet of 2.0-inch HDPE force main, 670 linear feet of 3.0-inch double contained HDPE force main, and associated pre-cast concrete wet wells, manholes and cleanouts. The EFC is a public benefit corporation that provides funding and technical assistance focused on “protecting, improving and restoring New York’s precious natural resources.”
According to Salina Supervisor Mark Nicotra, the loan will save the town’s taxpayers about $40,000 to $50,000 a year.
“This is fantastic news for the residents of Salina,” he said. “What a great Christmas gift for Salina.”
Nicotra said the town’s comptroller’s office filed all the necessary paperwork to obtain the loan.
The Salina Landfill was built in the flood-prone 3.7-acre wetland next to Ley Creek in the early 1950s. From the time of its construction until 1975, the landfill received commercial, residential and industrial waste, as well as hazardous materials from nearby General Motors’ Fisher Guide Division, including 640 tons of paint sludge and 22 tons of waste paint thinner and reducer. The town stopped officially receiving waste at the landfill in 1975, but it wasn’t capped until 1982.
Because of the hazardous wastes dumped in the landfill, Ley Creek, a tributary of Onondaga Lake, and the surrounding waterways were contaminated. The lower portion of the creek was designated a Superfund site by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, which means it’s an uncontrolled or abandoned place where hazardous waste is located, possibly impacting local people or ecosystems. Areas designated as Superfund sites receive federal guidance in order to eliminate the hazardous waste. The town worked with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the EPA to create a remediation plan in 2007. Work actually began to clean up the area in 2012 and has continued to the present. The total cost of the remediation is somewhere between $18 million and $35.5 million. The town is responsible for 25 percent.
EFC officials said the loan will help the town with its portion of the cleanup.
“EFC is pleased to have been able to assist the Town of Salina in securing affordable financing for this important project,” said EFC President and CEO Matthew Driscoll. “The result will be a cleaner environment and improved public health for generations to come.”
According to a release from the EFC, the pretreatment plant the loan will help construct will consist of six extraction well pumps and control equipment, an influent pre-cast submersible packaged pump station, 2,200 square foot concrete masonry unit brick building, 125,000 gallons glass-fused-to- steel water storage tank, bag filters, air strippers, carbon filters, parshall flumes, manholes, pipes and site work. The pretreated leachate will be discharged to the Metropolitan Syracuse WWTP (84.2 MGD) for further treatment.
The EFC loan is in addition to more than $13.6 million in grants from the Department of Environmental Conservation’s Inactive Hazardous Waste Disposal Site Remediation Program. EFC also provided a $1.33 million loan from this year’s sale of $213 million in “Green” bonds. The town plans to convert the latest EFC loan to a 30-year loan next year.
