28 | Landfill nearing end of the road Earthworks on stage nine of the Marlborough District Council’s Bluegums Landfill. Marlborough District Council: Bluegums T T Hugh de Lacy REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT Derek Gates 021 932 223 derekroading@gmail.com ROADING AND ASPHALT LTD Roading & Asphalt Ltd is a family owned and operated business that was established in Northland in 1984 building roads for councils in the North and then diversi ed into Land ll Operations in 1993. We pride ourselves with our very loyal and skilled staff who have been with us many years, one in fact 24 years —we are a “Small Company with a Big Reputation.” We are proud to have a fantastic working relationship with the Engineers & staff of the Marlborough District Council in conjunction with Tonkin & Taylor in Wellington. Derek and his staff Congratulate the Marlborough District Council on the progress and development of stage 9 at the Bluegums Land ll. The Engineers are always thinking ahead. There are 13 stages scheduled across the lifetime of the Marlborough District Council’s big Bluegums Landfill, south of Blenheim, and the end is in sight with contractors currently building stage nine. Bluegums was opened in 1996, and will serve the district until 2047 at average inputs of 65,000 tonnes a year. “We’re just three years short of our 30th anniversary, and Stage Nine is being delivered over two seasons,” Marlborough District Council’s Solid Waste Manager Dr Alec McNeil says. “The first season is taken up with the earthworks, where they shape the valley that we’re filling in, then we shut down for the winter. “Then we’ll come back and line the new area with a triple-lined containment system that prevents leachate from escaping from the landfill.” The main contractor on the Bluegums landfill is the Christchurch-based company Isaac Group, working through its wholly-owned subsidiary Simcox Construction, which has a branch in Marlborough. “Effectively Simcox is the main contractor, so they’re responsible for the whole job, but they bring in specialists and sub-contractors like Viking to do the lining work, a specialist trade that construction companies don’t do,” Alec says. Viking builds a lot of storage systems around the country and also work on landfills where they’re regarded as experts in their field, placing and welding the sections together. The lining comprises layers of pieces of plastic that are overlapped and welded, all subject to a quality control system, so it becomes a sealed unit. Other protection layers are then laid across the lining, and the first couple of layers of waste that goes into it is mostly soft material, containing nothing that could damage the lining. Once that’s all in place it’s handed across to Roading and Asphalt, the company that’s been operating the landfill since 2011, and who have recently won a new contract for it from the district council. The entire project, including design fees and contract management, is costed at around $6 million, though of course not all of that goes to Simcox Construction. Under the Resource Management Act, landfills are given a 35-years consent which, in Bluegums’ case, expires in 2030, so work is under way planning for its replacement or extension. “There’s no certainty that Bluegums will be extended beyond Stage 13: we’ve got to be open-minded and start the process well in advance, six or seven years out, and that’s what we’re up to at the moment. “Even if we’re applying for a new consent for Bluegums there’s quite a lot of work involved in designing the facility, and we need to do this over a four-year period,” Alec says. Bluegums has a built-in collection system for the methane released by the decomposition of the waste, but at the moment this is simply flared off. “One of the things we’re looking at is putting the methane through a heat-exchanger or generator to produce electricity for the local grid, eliminating both polluting gases in the process, and we should be in a position to make a decision on that by the end of the year,” Alec says.
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