MANISTIQUE - Manistique City Council accepted a cost proposal for submitting a plan to the state for reducing how often wells are monitored at the city's landfill. The action was taken during a recent city council meeting.
According to Manistique City Manager Sheila Aldrich, a $5,100 plan to submit a request for the reduction to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality comes from Coleman Engineering Company, of Iron Mountain. Coleman Engineering does all the landfill groundwater monitoring and sampling of seven post closure wells and 12 sentinel wells at the site. They then report their findings to the MDEQ.
"The city operates a landfill, which it's a closed landfill, and so we have to do monitoring of testing wells," explained Aldrich. "The results are sent to the DEQ two times a year. They tell us the metals and different things we have to test for."
Aldrich said the proposal stems from testing and sampling in years' past where many of the results have turned up negative.
Because of this, Coleman Engineering's plan would request what is called a parameter reduction at the site, or for a reduction in sampling frequency.
For example, according to one section of Coleman Engineering's proposal, the seven post closure wells are currently sampled for 22 metals each. Seventeen of these metals are being requested for removal from the sampling list based on non-detection or low level detections observed at the site.
Coleman Engineering's scope of work includes a review and tabulation of the past eight sampling events taken at the wells.
Currently wells are sampled once in the spring and the fall.
Any reductions are expected to save the city money in testing.
"It would save us significantly over the course of several years," said Aldrich. Coleman Engineering's plan submitted to council demonstrates that potentially $1,745 to $3,695 could be saved per sampling event.
Aldrich said Coleman Engineering will now work toward submitting the plan to DEQ, who will have the final say as to whether the reduction request will be granted.