The former unlined landfill that operated in the town of Salina, N.Y., from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s and accepted all types of waste had been dormant for nearly 20 years.

The New York State Dept. of Environmental Conservation identified it as a state inactive hazardous waste site, and it became a sub-site of a federal Superfund site in 1996. Years of investigation followed, and construction to remedy the site began in 2010.

Work was done in two phases and included a landfill cap, a leachate collection system and a leachate pretreatment plant. Lead design firm CHA placed access roads in utility corridors to enable access to overhead utilities and the groundwater monitoring well network. The team relocated a stormwater swale and culvert to outside the landfill footprint to avoid additional capping work.

The team consolidated the landfill footprint to create a stable area for the pretreatment plant and to create wetland mitigation areas, leaving more space available for future site reuse. Two wetland mitigation areas were created out of many small wetland areas to improve the ecological habitat.

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