There is a gigantic pit outside of Yorkton. It’s long and deep enough to hold several trains. It’s lined with a black material that shines in the sun.
Grab your garbage bags and compost bins; there’s a new landfill site in town.
Construction of a new cell at the Yorkton landfill is nearly complete. The massive trash collection site (roughly the size of six CFL football fields) will be open for business in the fall of this year.
After the project was approved in 2015, construction began in 2016. Wet conditions slowed the progress of the site, but workers managed to complete the majority of the cell in 2017.
Once wholly finished, the cell will have a depth of five to nine meters with a total size of 250,000 cubic meters.
“Potentially we’ll fill it in five to seven years, depending on extra volumes,” said Aron Hershmiller, Assistant Director of Environmental Services with the City of Yorkton.
The current landfill cell in Yorkton opened in 1980. Due to the immense amount of garbage in the site (a report revealed, on average, every Yorktonite donates one ton of trash to the landfill each year), our town needed more space, despite a landfill expansion in the late 1990s.
Government regulations also encouraged Yorkton to construct a new cell. Since Saskatchewan has the highest amount of landfills per-capita in Canada, the provincial government is asking municipalities to improve the environmental impact of their landfills.
“With the Ministry of Environment...enforcing the regulations...municipalities across the province have to meet those requirements,” Hershmiller said.
With those regulations in mind, Yorkton ordered the new cell be built with a liner. This protective layer stops the toxins in garbage from leaking into the soil and harming the land.
A leachate pond was built next to the cell. A tube connects the two sites, allowing the pond to siphon dirty water away from the cell. This transfer will prevent the contaminated liquid from entering the atmosphere through the water cycle.
“It’s better to protect the environment,” Hershmiller said.
This new cell is the first in a series. The city plans to build three similar cells in the surrounding area over the next 50 years.
This project comes with a $5.6 million price tag. It’s a steep cost, one the city hopes to offset by raising the sanitary landfill fees. Council approved of the fee hikes back in April.
“Those [fees] are put in place to help the operational expenses and future expansion costs,” Hershmiller said.
Other communities will also help with the costs. Many smaller towns surrounding Yorkton are in the process of closing their landfills. They will pay to dump their garbage in the new cell. 13 communities already use the Yorkton landfill, with more expected to follow suit.
Yorkton charges out-of-town organizations $97 per ton to use its landfill.
The older landfill cell will be shut down, although its last day is up in the air.
“There’s no set date [for its closure],” Herhmiller said.
