Jackson, Mich. (WKHM) — The McGill Road Landfill could be in danger of having less than one year’s worth of capacity according to Jackson County officials. The issue stems from an application for a construction permit to the Michigan Department of Energy, Great Lakes, and Emissions (EGLE).

The County says the permit is for a vertical expansion of the only Type II landfill in Jackson (according to official EGLE records, Liberty Environmentalists Landfill is Type III) that would extend its capacity to 13 years of availability. The proposed area for expansion would take place between three cells of the facility where service roads currently are (pictured below). A Type II landfill is where most trash ends up after being collected by a waste hauler.

The issue is that EGLE has verbally told the county they plan to deny the application on the basis that they view the expansion as a lateral one, and is therefore not consistent with Jackson’s Solid Waste Management Plan (SWMP), which says non-vertical expansions must be required by EGLE.

EGLE believes that since the areas planned for expansion are not currently licensed landfill cells, the expansion is a lateral one. Jackson County Board of Public Works (BPW) Chairman Geoffrey Snyder called this a “tortured” interpretation, citing the landfill’s footprint not expanding in any cardinal direction.

In a July 14 letter addressed to a member of EGLE’s Material Management Division, BPW Chairman Snyder said the County did not perceive the filling of the space between the three cells as a lateral expansion, as a vertical expansion of the landfill would otherwise be impossible to accomplish. The letter says Jackson’s current SWMP recognizes that there is little land to support a new Type II landfill “given the environmentally sensitive nature of a high ground water table throughout most of the County,” along with the desire to “preserve prime agricultural lands.”

It was also requested that EGLE take no official action before a meeting can take place between the department and the BPW. If EGLE does not approve the expansion, county officials say that the McGill Road Landfill will run out of capacity in less than a year, and its unrecycled trash would eventually need to be sent outside of Jackson to other counties that have reciprocal agreements within the SWMP.

That means costs imposed on Jackson families, businesses, and other entities that rely on curbside pickups would likely see a sharp increase, and could even double due to higher costs on garbage collection services. According to the letter, while the County has taken initial steps to create a recycling plan with EGLE to lessen the amount of trash taken to the landfill, an approval of said plan is still far off.

Chairman Snyder says he has not heard back from EGLE as of Friday afternoon. WKHM has also reached out to a member of EGLE’s Material Management Division with no response at this time.