New Committee To Explore Landfill Options

The Board of Health is looking for a few good men and women.

The three-member board, which oversees the disposal of Marbleheaders' trash, is gathering the names of individuals who want to serve on a special building committee that will decide what to do about the town's landfill.

Director of Public Health Wayne Attridge said the board has received letters from several people offering to serve on the committee. He said he will present those names to the board when it meets again, probably next month.

Attridge said he would propose that the committee have five to seven members. In addition, Attridge and Becky Curran, the town planner, would probably serve on the committee as ex-officio members.

The committee will consider "less costly" options to capping the landfill since voters rejected a proposal to spend $22 million for the cap and a new transfer station in a special election last month.

Attridge said no new ideas have surfaced for the landfill. The consultants continue to monitor the landfill to determine the levels of contaminants, but have not proposed any new options for the future of the landfill or the trash transfer operations.

"I am going to leave that up to the committee," he said.

The board proposed to cap the highly regulated landfill with several levels of gravel, a rubber membrane and asphalt to keep rainwater from seeping through the trash and carrying contaminants into the soil or a stream that crosses the landfill. 

A priority for Attridge is to: "keep it (the contaminants) out of that stream."

After the proposal was rejected by the voters, the Health Department had about $114,600 in the budget to continue monitoring the pollutants in the landfill. It reports the results of its sampling to the state's Department of Environmental Protection.   

Marblehead's trash continues to be sorted at the transfer station and trucked to a disposal facility in Saugus at a cost of $95 a ton. The town generates about 10,000 tons of trash per year.

One possible option is to close the transfer station and truck the trash directly to the Saugus facility, Attridge said last month.

The town is also looking for ways to purchase a house adjacent to the landfill that is contaminated. At Town Meeting, members approved purchasing the home, owned by Jeff Dinsmore at 57 Stony Brook Road. But the voters rejected spending $899, 950 for the property, leaving the town unable to buy the property.

In an unrelated matter, the transfer station will be closed next Tuesday to allow for repairs to the compactor. The repairs will take only one day. All other areas of the landfill will be open.