Staff Report

The Southeastern Public Service Authority will begin work this spring on a $4.8 million cover to the regional landfill on U.S. Route 58, an action that will end &uot;garbage juice&uot; leaks that have cropped up with increasing frequency on the site this year.

Earlier this week, the state Department of Environmental Quality approved a permit allowing SPSA to cover about 108 acres of the landfill with layers of soil, drainage webbing and synthetic liner to prevent leachate leaks.

It took the DEQ nearly a year to approve the permit.

SPSA has been patching small leaks with soil as they erupted on the surface of the landfill, sending leachate moving downhill toward the drainage ditches, said Dan Miles, SPSA’s director of operations.

The DEQ reported that none of the pollutants actually made it into those ditches.

The top of the landfill will remain open, Miles said. It can accommodate another 100,000 tons of trash.