Total $1 million-plus project expected to start soon
Gilmer County has received $286,427 in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) grant funding that will go toward extensive improvements at the Tower Road Landfill.
Gilmer was among more than 100 Georgia cities and counties that received a total of $422 million in ARPA grant awards for safe drinking water and wastewater system projects. The award recipients were announced by Gov. Brian Kemp last week.
What’s now estimated at a $1 million-plus project for Gilmer County stems from ruptures in 2019 of force main piping that carries leachate (dumpsite runoff) to a storage tank at the landfill site.
Today, Tower Road operates as a trash convenience center. The actual landfill, which reached capacity in the mid-1990s, has been closed for decades.
State Environmental Protection Division (EPD) guidelines require the landfill to still be monitored and its environmental impact controlled.
“We still do methane monitoring, groundwater monitoring and everything just as if it was an open landfill,” said Gilmer Public Works Director Jim Smith.
The June 2019 force main ruptures were repaired, but it was determined that the landfill’s plumbing system needs additional repairs to avoid future ruptures and potential environmental damage.
At a July 2019 Board of Commissioners work session, Kurt McCord, of Carter and Sloope Engineers, addressed the condition of the landfill system’s pumps, wet well and force main, which carries leachate to a holding tank.
McCord said the system was installed in 1994, and the pump is not right for the system, which causes it to run at 35 to 40 percent of its efficiency. Fixing just the pumps and the well would cost more than $600,000, he estimated then.
A duplex lift station is used to carry leachate to the Ellijay-Gilmer sewer system for treatment. A stream runs adjacent to the landfill site.
Moving the old lift station away from that stream will be part of the forthcoming work, Smith noted.
“The original lift station that was built originally was built too close to the stream,” he said. “We will be relocating that lift station back off of the stream so we can minimize the damage of having a spill.”
The county has already received funding for a large part of the work through the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority (GEFA) and Department of Natural Resources. The supplemental ARPA grant will allow for replacement of approximately 1,380 feet of gravity transmission main from the landfill entrance to the sewer system.
“We already had the funding for the lift station and the force main. What this does is allow us to rebuild the sewer line that comes out of the holding tank at the landfill, which empties into the city sewer. This will completely refurbish and rebuild all of that plumbing system inside the landfill,” Smith said.
A preconstruction conference is scheduled for March 8, and the contractor is expected to be given a notice to proceed with starting the project at that time, Smith noted.
The contract for the landfill work has been awarded to T Stanco, of Jasper.