Language of bill for landfill spurs 2 agreements

Staff

Published Wednesday, July 30, 2008

The Albert Lea City Council voted Monday to authorize a joint powers agreement and a grant agreement with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency for the North Edgewater Park landfill cleanup.

The agreement would allow the MPCA to act as a general contractor to the city to design and relocate waste from the former city dump, with the MPCA having the final ownership and responsibility for the closed landfill site.

The project is coming to fruition after in 2006, the state Legislature allocated $3.65 million in state bonding funds to the MPCA to use toward the cleanup of the former landfill, which is leaching into Fountain Lake.

Because reports estimated the cost of the project to be increased to at least between $4.5 and $6 million, the city put in a request for an additional $2.5 million in bonding funds. The state appropriated the funding this year.

However, because the bonds from the first round were awarded to the MPCA and the second round of bonds were awarded to Albert Lea, the agency and the city are coming together under a joint powers agreement to get the project done. Originally it was planned that the MPCA would be in charge of the entire project.

Though the bonding language mix-up may appear minor, it has caused hours of thought and discussion.

During Thursday’s preagenda meeting, City Manager Victoria Simonsen said she and city staff have been meeting regularly with the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office to figure out the situation.

In the end, it was concluded that the city will take responsibility on paper for anything happening with the project, but the MPCA will oversee it, she said.

She noted she does not know how the bonding language was changed from the 2006 measure to the 2008 measure, but to go back and change the wording in the language so that it matched would require going back through committees and hearings at the Legislature in 2009. In the end, there’d be no guarantee that the money would come through, prompting further delays, she said. She didn’t want to risk that.

The agreements are a way around the language mix-up.

Don Abrams with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency said earlier this month that the work to construct the composite-lined cell across the street from the current transfer station could begin in September. The cell should be completed this fall.

“I think it’s one of the single most-important projects for the city to help with our lake cleanup,” Councilor Vern Rasmussen said during the City Council meeting Monday.

The 30-acre former North Edgewater Park site was originally used as a sand and gravel mining operation, and from 1956 to 1972 it served as the Albert Lea dump, accepting municipal solid waste — which included mixed commercial, industrial and residential wastes.

When the dump was in operation, borrow pits were filled with the waste and open burning was practiced. When operations of the dump ceased, however, the site was covered with lake sediments dredged from Fountain Lake and there was no formal engineered closure of the area.

---

WOULD YOU LIKE TO SHARE THIS STORY?

---