The City of Hartselle is looking at ways to extend the life of the city landfill as much as 12 years without considering an expansion.

According to a study by Pugh Wright McAnally Civil Engineers, the current life expectancy of the landfill is 16 to 20 months based on last year’s waste intake of 2,552 tons. The landfill can only take in about 6,000 tons of waste.

Nathan Tomberlin, lead engineer for the study, said that life expectancy could increase to as much as 35 months if the city relocated the cover material stockpile, relocated wood chipper operations and used additional area for construction and demolition operations on the landfill site.

Those items, which would not come at a cost to the city, would free up 8,850 tons of space in the landfill.

Tomberlin also proposed mitigating a “blue line” stream to free up an additional 36,000 tons of space at a cost of $115,000. That would extend the life of the landfill by eight or nine years, thus, pushing the closing date of the landfill to around 2027.

At that point, the city would have to either close the landfill at a cost of at least $300,000 or expand it. Tomberlin said that there’s no guarantee that a landfill expansion would be approved.

“Landfill expansions are not common, but it is more likely with C&D (construction and demolition), which is what you have,” Tomberlin said. “However, that will take years for that to be approved. We would have to file for the MOD permit on the blue line mitigation and then file for an expansion permit almost immediately after that.”

Tomberlin also recommended that the no tipping fees be restricted to Hartselle residents only, transfer and hauling operations to Morgan County Regional Landfill and encouraging recycling of items for proper disposal.