The board of the regional trash authority spent a long meeting Wednesday morning wrestling with the issue of excess liquid in its Suffolk landfill.

Leachate, as it’s called, is a natural occurrence in landfills, but it is supposed to be pumped out regularly and kept under a certain amount. The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality regulates leachate and says landfills can have no more than 12 inches of it.

But the Southeastern Public Service Authority landfill in Suffolk has about 30 feet of it in two different cells, the authority’s board first heard last month.

The DEQ this week issued a notice of violation to the authority. Board members grilled SPSA staff and a consultant’s project manager for about two hours during their regular meeting Wednesday morning in Chesapeake.

The board members were concerned about how the problem will be remedied, how much it will cost and how it went undetected for so long.

Jeffrey Murray of consultant firm HDR said about one million gallons have been removed from Cell V in the last four weeks. The liquid level is about three to four feet lower as a result.

However, there has been no pumping from Cell VI, and the liquid level has risen four to five feet.

“We’re not getting ahead,” Murray said. Currently, the landfill is only permitted to remove up to 50,000 gallons per day, which is not getting the job done. He said there is at least 10 million gallons, likely more, in the landfill.

Regular monitoring of groundwater and surface water sources has found no contamination, Murray said.

The leachate that is removed is discharged into the Hampton Roads Sanitation District’s sewer system and treated. Murray said other options are being examined.

HRSD could allow leachate to be pumped from the landfill and hauled to other treatment plants in Chesapeake, Hampton and Newport News, provided the permit can be modified. But Henry Strickland, SPSA’s landfill and environmental superintendent, said that’s not the safest option.

“It’s not the most efficient, it’s not the safest, it’s not the easiest thing to do,” he said.

The potential for leachate spills and accidents with more trucks on the road makes pumping and hauling less safe from a personal safety and environmental perspective, Strickland said.

Even so, the authority is soliciting bids to start pumping and hauling in one to two months.

That’s not nearly fast enough for some of the board members.

“When I see months instead of weeks,” I think it’s too long,” said William Sorrentino Jr., who represents Virginia Beach on the board. “I want to see us move forward quicker than the normal pace of engineering activities.”

Board members tossed around the idea of using an emergency procurement process. Several said they consider the situation an emergency.

How much that and other options would cost was another issue.

“This is extremely important information I’m looking for sooner rather than later,” Dave Arnold, an attorney who represents Suffolk on the board, said of the potential cost.

The staff said it’s too soon to tell how much the problem will cost the authority, but it’s almost guaranteed to be in the millions.

Another top concern for board members is that the situation developed to its current serious level under the noses of SPSA officials. The condition has likely been in existence for several years.

SPSA Executive Director Bucky Taylor indicated a conditional use permit request the authority has submitted to construct a new cell at the landfill will not be moving forward until DEQ issues a corrective plan for the leachate.

City Manager Patrick Roberts said during a break in the meeting he has major concerns about the issue.

“The major issue is that it went undetected as long as it did,” Roberts said.

Strickland said after the meeting the SPSA staff has learned it needs to do better record-keeping in house. Despite the state regulation, they are not required to report regularly on the leachate level, only on how much they are pumping out.

“We’re moving forward at a much faster pace than what the board believes,” he said.