It takes a lot of permitting to keep the city landfill operation going. The requirements laid down by the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality are stringent and require a complex daily operation and considerable compliance cost for a future expansion of the household waste operation. The current permit for household waste disposal at the Kimball Landfill has a five year life which expires on May 25, 2010.The Kimball Board of Public Works, at their Dec. 15 meeting, approved a $30,000 cost to have Golder Associates handle the re-permitting process. Golder Associates also do permitting work for the Clean Harbors facility south of Kimball.Failure to re-permit could mean that Kimball household waste  would have to be trucked to a qualified disposal site, possibly as far away as Ogallala.City Manager Harold Farrar pointed out that three separate permits cover operations at the Kimball Landfill.First, there is a permit for the Construction and Demolition waste area of the landfill.Second, the expiring permit in question covers the land portion of  the landfill where household waste bales are stacked.Third, there is a permit for the indoors operation where household waste, is dumped and baled.The very visible city garbage trucks collect household waste that residents put in the brown dumpsters located all over town. This household waste is unloaded into a concrete pit in the large building at the landfill. There it is compressed into bales, with compression applied from two directions. The bales are then trucked to the designated landfill area, stacked and covered with earth each day.There is a layer of Geosynthetic Clay Liner underneath the massive stack of bales.This GCL prevents water from leaking though the stacked bales and into the groundwater supply.With the NDEQ changing it’s requirements concerning the use of GCL, the BPW has authorized a letter to sound out NDEQ thinking about use of GCL only in any future landfill expansion. The alternative to GCL only is GCL plus a “plastic film” layer to insure leakage is not possible. This “plastic film” costs about $5 per square yard.The present area lined with GCL for bale stackage will be filled in about five years, more or less. Development of a new area for stackage will then be needed.The city has space for new stackage at the present landfill acreage, but must get a separate permit for the area of expansion.This expense will be facing the city in the not too distant future.Testing for water leakage at the present bale storage site is done through four test wells at the landfill. The direction of ground water movement and possible presence of any contaminants is verified by quarterly sampling from these wells.A gas probe is also driven into the pile of bales once a month and the amount of gas generated from decay inside the stack is determined. The drilling of three gas test wells will be required by NDEQ as part of re-permitting the present bale storage area.The cost of these wells is not included in the $30,000 just authorized.When the present bale storage area reaches capacity, a “plastic film” cover will be put over the top of the bale pile, in addition to a layer of earth.Considerable laboratory testing and computer modeling will be required to show that the protective layer under the area proposed for expansion of bale storage will not permit the passage of water. There will be a significant cost associated with this required testing and modeling work.Operating and expanding the landfill operation is not cheap. The recent increase in landfill rates was made with the realization that such costs are not far down the road.Farrar jokingly said, “One of my goals is to get people used to calling it a landfill instead of a dump.”Back in the old days, dumps were cheap. With all the environmental requirements now in place, landfills are not cheap.It is very clear that “It’s not your father’s Oldsmobile” any longer.