Thanks to work completed by local governments and the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality’s Cease and Transfer Program, communities across Wyoming can rest assured that they will remain safe from chemical contaminants created by leaking landfills.
The program, created by the Legislature in 2013, helps municipalities across the state reduce health risks to citizens and the environment that could result from leaking landfills. The program supports communities that want to close their landfills and build transfer stations but don’t have the money to do so. Nearly every small community with a landfill has signed up.
Craig McOmie, DEQ’s program manager, explains that the agency discovered through landfill monitoring wells that many landfills around the state had groundwater contamination. McOmie notes that the DEQ and U.S. EPA originally believed Wyoming was too arid for the landfills to leak leachate, and thus the state didn’t require landfills to be lined throughout the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. It is now clear, however, that rain and snow in landfills can enable leachate to eventually make its way into wells or aquifers.
For more information on the program, see here.
Wheatland Transfer Station
