Granger aims to build landfill on top of hazardous landfill, likely a first in the U.S.

WATERTOWN TWP. — Granger Waste Services’ proposed new landfill near Grand Ledge is so innovative it’s believed to be the first of its kind in the United States.

In fact, the company's idea − building a new landfill on top of a hazardous and abandoned landfill − has only been proposed once in the U.S., in Pennsylvania, according to Michigan regulators.

That Pennsylvania project, proposed three years ago, is still in the approval stage, with regulators in the Keystone State recently presenting developers with a nine-page list of engineering challenges needing solutions.

Michigan regulators can relate. They agree Granger’s idea is innovative but told Clinton County officials, who get first say over whether the project can move forward, that there will be complicated engineering challenges, including dealing with a number of environmental problems at the former landfill.

The project is key for the more than 250,000 residents who call Greater Lansing home because landfills in the region have less than 15 years capacity and new laws ushered in by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer will make it more difficult to create landfills in new areas, something that hasn't happened in Michigan since the 1990s.

There are a few dozen examples of building landfills on top of landfills, or what the industry terms piggybacking, but what makes this proposal different is that the now-closed landfill where the new facility would be built contains hazardous waste.

Piggybacking, also called vertical expansion, requires a lot of engineering, said Scott Dean, a spokesperson for the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes & Energy.

"The challenges are not typical," he said, in a statement about the Watertown Township site. "(The) closed hazardous waste landfill does not have a liner, it does not have a modern leachate collection system, and there has been recent evidence of high leachate levels and ongoing differential settlement."

Granger did a vertical expansion at its Wood Street landfill in 2022, said Tim Krause, the company's engineering director.

"The thing that makes this effort unique is that the existing landfill and proposed landfill are regulated by different federal and state rules and, therefore, different departments," Krause said in a statement. "It has been common practice not to mix the two. We believe that it will start to become more common."

The old landfill has been closed for 30 years and did not include modern landfill practices but "routine monitoring demonstrates that the landfill continues to be protective of the environment and meet the approval of the state regulatory authority," Krause said, in the statement.

Granger is looking to do the complicated work in part because it would be a good site for another landfill.

"It is far from the cheapest path forward," said Jim Grant, an engineer with Middle M Management who is working for Granger on the project, told Clinton County officials recently. "There are other ways for them (Granger) to try and create additional space for their landfill. They just see this as the best way to utilize the existing property that's already got a history."

It would be the third landfill on the same property off of West Grand River Highway.

Closed in the 1980s, the landfill is on roughly 60 acres of land. A currently-operating landfill is near the same plot of land, but that approximately 180-acre parcel has taken virtually no waste in the last few years.

The piggyback landfill would be a bit smaller than the 60 acres since there would need to be more buffer space around the edges. Most of the Greater Lansing area trash in recent years has gone to the other currently-operating Granger landfill on Wood Street north of the Eastwood Towne Center development.

Both Granger and state regulators said that the process would take roughly a decade, if the engineering gets approved and if local governments including Clinton County agree to the expansion.

Unprecedented landfill

The "piggyback" method has been done dozens of times around the world since the first attempt in New York State in 1987, according to a 2015 French research paper.

But the technology was so new then that many standards had not been settled, the authors said.

The challenges of a normal piggyback landfill include the extra weight on top of the old landfill, the potential for crushing the old pipe system that collects and pumps out leaks, and potentially instability of the foundations.

"Those are the engineering challenges in a typical vertical expansion," said Dean of EGLE in his statement.

The hazardous waste site is currently under corrective action plans for recent discoveries of a boron plume and volatile organic compounds, Dean said.

It is showing "recent evidence of high leachate levels and ongoing differential settlement in the waste mass," according to EGLE.

As far as Michigan regulators could find, the piggybacking effort happening in Pennsylvania offers a window into what Granger and Michigan regulators believe would be a 10-year process before a landfill could open.

The Pennsylvania proposal has spent three years under review without final approval.

The review into building a landfill on top of a "hazardous waste impoundment" there had been put on hold due to wetland issues and a revised site plan is now under review, said John Repetz, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

The list of agency concerns in that project includes wetland designations, environmental assessments and details about how the project would affect the community.

As with the Pennsylvania application, the one submitted by Granger would take some time.

At the moment, the proposed landfill is being considered by the Clinton County Solid Waste Committee and if the committee approves the plan, the full county Board of Commissioners is expected to consider it. Additionally, two-thirds of local municipalities would need to give approval before the plan would be sent to state regulators at the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy.

Granger officials have estimated it would give another decade or more of capacity based on current usage.

Contact Mike Ellis at mellis@lsj.com or 517-267-0415

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Why Greater Lansing could be home to a first of its kind landfill