The expansion of the Pitkin County Landfill in Aspen, Colorado, is expected to begin later this month and provide approximately six more years of life to the “rapidly-filling” facility, reports The Aspen Times.
The close to $2 million project will increase the size of the landfill by about 5 acres and the capacity by approximately 900,000 cubic yards. However, according to Pitkin County Solid Waste Director Cathy Hall the current construction boom in the Roaring Folk Valley could quickly eat into that predicted six more years of space.
“With all the people moving here and tearing down houses, I have a feeling [the lifespan] will be less,” Hall said. “It’s gonna be a big year.”
Construction and demolition debris, which makes up the majority of the deposits in the landfill, is already up 3 percent over 2019, she said. Not yet included in those totals is the complete demolition of two local hotels—the Molly Gibson Lodge and the Hotel Aspen.
In addition to the debris associated with those demolitions, which are expected to significantly increase waste deposited in the landfill, debris from the Sky Hotel—torn down in summer of 2017—took up 3,030 cubic yards of space in the facility.
And that doesn’t count debris and contaminated mine tailings that will be thrown into the landfill from whatever happens at the base of Lift 1A, Hall told The Aspen Times.
According to Hall, state environmental health officials signed off on the north expansion of the landfill in February and the project was put out for bid not long after. Pitkin County budgeted $2.2 million for it, though a construction company from Rifle, Colorado, bid just over $1.8 million for the project and that final contract is pending.
Construction to set to begin in mid-to-late June and be completed by October or November.
As the northern expansion begins, landfill officials plan to turn their attention to designing a much larger proposed expansion to the south. That second expansion—which will involve much more engineering and construction than the current expansion—would expand the landfill’s capacity by 5.6 million cubic yards and extend the facility’s life by 30-to-40 more years, officials have said.
Pitkin County’s construction and demolition (C&D) ordinance requires developers to put down a deposit of $1,000 per ton of estimated waste. If developers are able to divert 25 percent of that waste to recycling or other reusable streams, the deposit will be returned. However, The Aspen Times reports many choose to simply pay the price in order to complete projects faster.