South Landfill Planning, Permitting, Design, and Construction

Background

As part of our engineering support for Brown County, Foth has assisted with planning, permitting, design, and construction of the new South Landfill in Holland, WI. This greenfield site was originally permitted for a county solid waste landfill in the 1990s but the project was set aside for the future as part of Brown County entering into a regional solid waste disposal agreement between Brown, Outagamie, and Winnebago Counties (BOW), known as BOW. As part of the agreement, the South Landfill was the last site to serve as the regional solid waste disposal location under BOW.

Approach

Foth has worked in tandem with Brown County to lay out, permit, design, and construct the new regional facility. We assisted Brown County with a systematic scope of work and approach that allowed for decisions to be made about development in a timely manner, including:

• Plan the use of an undeveloped property that includes the new landfill and related infrastructure to meet the needs of the regional landfill operation including all utilities, buildings, roads, and future needs.
• Permit and update the landfill design to bring the facility in compliance with current regulations, while avoiding going back through the Feasibility Determination permit process.
• Complete new background groundwater monitoring as part of the updated permitting process.
• Adjust the facility design to account for the electric utility easement and maximize the landfill disposal capacity.
• Manage greater than 1 million cubic yards of excess soil to develop the initial phase of the South Landfill.
• Work with Brown County staff as integrated team members and provide cost effective construction quality assurance during construction.
• Create a design team and delivery schedule that allowed Brown County to bid the $15 million construction project by the end of 2020.

Results

Over the past six years, Foth has assisted Brown County to complete work that allows the South Landfill to move forward on schedule to provide regional landfill disposal capacity to the County and the BOW partners starting in 2022. Working with Brown County has produced the following results:

• The 2015 Resource Recovery Park Master Plan document completed for the South Landfill property created a template for the site that identified critical facility infrastructure locations, planned for future landfill expansion, and set aside parts of the property for implementing future waste management technology such as waste processing.
• The Plan of Operation permitting activities included time to install some new groundwater monitoring wells and gather eight rounds of background data in preparation for submittal of the Plan of Operation application. It also included an updated review and mitigation of wetlands so that construction could proceed on time.
• The updated South Landfill design adjusted the western boundary of the waste limits to account for the American Transmission Company easement while adjusting the liner and leachate collection system elevation to maintain the maximum permitted capacity without needing to go back through Feasibility Determination permitting.
• The construction work was split into two phases allowing the 1 million CY of excess soil to be relocated for fill during 2020 and the liner, leachate tank, maintenance building, scales and other infrastructure to be constructed in 2021.
• Foth has worked with the County as an integrated team to allow for surveying and some field documentation activities to be completed by Brown County staff, saving time and money for the County.

What’s next?

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