The City’s former landfill on West Bloomington Road stopped accepting waste in the mid 1970s. The City augmented the landfill cap from 1998 to 2002 to ensure it met minimum thicknesses of 2 feet of compacted clay and 6 inches of topsoil. On July 3, 2014, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency issued the City a Certification of Closure for the landfill. The Certification of Closure included a statement that the regulatory post-closure care period started in 2002, the year the cover construction was completed rather than this year.
The regulatory post-closure period is a minimum of 15 years. Therefore, at best case, the City may be able to move past regulatory post-closure care in 2017 instead of 2029. This is not a given, but in any case, the City’s regulatory post-closure care period will be shorter with a 2002 starting date than a 2014 starting date.
The City will likely continue groundwater monitoring at some level after the regulatory post-closure care period is finished but it will be a decision based on risk or responsive ownership rather than a regulatory requirement. At that point the City may decide to revise the analytical testing lists and/or frequency from the groundwater test requirements specified by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.