St. Lucie's new way of getting rid of leachate costs less, is environmentally ... - TCPalm

ST. LUCIE COUNTY — Officials are changing the way the county gets rid of landfill water that comes in contact with garbage.

And they said the environmentally friendly move would save the county about $1.2 million a year.

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County commissioners agreed at their Tuesday morning meeting to build a $384,000 pipe to pump the liquid underground to the deep injection well at the Treasure Coast Energy Center on Glades Cut-Off Road near the landfill. Only Commissioner Chris Dzadovsky dissented.

The center is owned by the Florida Municipal Power Agency and operated by the Fort Pierce Utilities Authority.

For the past two years, the county has paid a company, Aqua Clean, to haul the county's leachate to the company's disposal site in Polk County, said County Solid Waste Division Director Ron Roberts. Leachate is water at the landfill that passes through garbage.

The county awarded the company a contract in July 2009 for a disposal rate of $130 per thousand gallons. In the first year, the county paid $1.8 million to truck the leachate. The county generated 38,000 gallons of leachate daily.

But the county's contract with Aqua Clean expires in June. Roberts said the county would have to increase its landfill disposal fees by nearly $8 per ton to keep up with the county's disposal rate of leachate.

Instead, Roberts said the county would save between $10 million and $20 million over the life of the 20-year agreement to use the well compared to the county's current contract.

Through the new method of leachate disposal, the county would be charged 14 cents per thousand gallons with a minimum monthly charge of $20,800.

The county could get out of the contract by giving 180 days notice, but neither the county nor the Fort Pierce Utilities Authority could cancel the contract in the first few years without paying $300,000 the first year, $200,000 the second year and $100,000 the third year.

Besides saving money, county officials and academic professionals said the county choosing to pump its leachate rather than haul it is more environmentally friendly.

Dr. Fred Bloetscher, an assistant professor at Florida Atlantic University's Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatics Engineering, spoke at the meeting about the safety of deep injection wells.

Bloetscher said deep injection wells never have endangered water supplies in South Florida.

"(Deep) injection wells have less risk associated with them than any other disposal option," he said.

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