The Kenai City Council met on Wednesday, January 3rd to discuss whether they would enter an agreement with the Kenai Peninsula Borough to accept Landfill Leachate at the wastewater treatment plant.
Lee Frey, the Solid Waste Director for the KPB explained that leachate is any water that touches the trash at the landfill.
There are big, bathtub like cells, which are aligned holes in the ground. This means that any water precipitation, such as snow, would get captured in these cells, and would be considered leachate.
Considering that the leachate may not be the best for the environment, Frey explains that there is a process to try and decontaminate the water.
“So right now, what we have is a leachate concentrator that essentially, we take that leachate, put it into super-hot container with natural gas, and then we heat it. We’re burning off about 90% of what goes in there. 10% of it comes back in a concentrated slurry that we put back into the waste mass, so we’re kind of just reducing the volume as we can,” said Frey.
The waste department had their current unit installed back in 2014. They did purchase a new unit for leachate that would be shipping to Kenai in spring and would be replaced in the summer. The unit would be two and a half times bigger than the current unit. The goal is to try and catch up on inventory throughout the winter, so when the unit gets installed over the summer, it will not be as difficult to catch up on new inventory.
Regarding the contract, Frey says that the waste department would be looking into putting a term contract out to bid in an attempt to hire a hauler to transport leachate to the city’s waste area. Frey mentions that the department is working with Scott Curtin and Eric Townsend Wastewater Treatment Plant to try and find the best, most effective way to transport the leachate to Kenai.
“We’re looking at using some sort of a pump truck. There are different options in the way they can load it, but we just be looking at unloaded it into a manhole. So, it’ll probably be about 5000 gallons at a time we’d be picking up and hauling it daily over here,” says Frey.
Council Member Alex Douthit asked why the waste department decided to go with the city of Kenai for this agreement instead of Soldotna.
Frey explained that the city of Soldotna discharges into the Kenai River while the city of Kenai discharges into Cook Inlet. Since they have different regulations in Soldotna than they do in Kenai, the wastewater discharge in Soldotna would be much more “stringent” than Kenai due to city regulations.
“If they took any, it would be significantly lower amounts than they’d be able to take due to possible changes in their water chemistry for the permit,” said Frey.
Regarding the agreement, the department would be looking into hauling 5,000 gallons of leachate a day, seven days a week, for a total of 35,000 gallons a week. This would be a one-year term contract.
“I think Scott said that’s probably about 2% or less than 2% of the volume that regular comes into the city Kenai treatment system and city Kenai I used to take lead shape from the landfill for disposal. It’s a common process around the US for leachate to be treated biologically through wastewater treatment plants so this is just the direction the borough went, [which] was the use the concentrator for leach a disposal in 2014. And we’re kind of moving on with that route but trying to catch up with our undersized equipment and get ahead of the game.”
After a unanimous vote, the council voted to approve the city manager to enter the agreement with the Kenai Peninsula Borough to accept landfill leachate at the wastewater treatment plant.
