Schaaf told council that there are only two cells left on the current site, meaning the landfill will have consumed all of the space currently permitted with the next 10 to 12 years.  "Firstly, we're looking at ensuring that we maintain a traditional waste disposal model, of excavating soil and placing waste into cells, and that we have enough capacity for the next 25 to 50 years.  That would allow us to bridge into a new technology that is different, and we'll be looking at that as a second part to this plan.  The third element of work is to look at amending our approval/permits, to give us additional capacity on the site.  We'll achieve that by [building] higher, as well as expanding east to the land we own there."

While the city already owns a 1/4 section immediately east of the existing site, Schaaf commented that, the public consultation portion of the process could become the most difficult and time consuming.  "We will use a process that will involve a series of open houses that will describe what the site could look like.  We will also form a community advisory group, which will allow members of the community to sit on a team-committee and be briefed on what we are doing and what the future looks like.  The number one challenge in citing or expanding landfills isn't the engineering or geotechnical side of it, but making sure that you can deal with any of the concerns/issues identified by the adjacent neighbors.  That is a very important piece of this project, and in fact could be the most difficult piece."

Schaaf added that building up would look much like the landfills in Edmonton or Toronto, where the majority of waste is contained above ground level.  "It's not going to look any different than other sites.  We have a funny site, in the way that our site is designed.  Typically sites are build 1/2 down and 2/3 up.   Ours is built 2/d down and 1/3 up.  Part of the work will be to take a look at the next 20 years [and decide] how we should build and fill those cells."

He says you can expect to see notices about the open houses popping up in about 6 months, and the results presented to council by the end of 2011.  "We have 10 - 12 years of capacity, but it can often take 3, 4, or 5 years to get [the process] through and that is a bit tight.  We certainly don't want to end up being a city without a landfill, because then you start to look like the city of Toronto or Vancouver that both have landfills without capacity and are sitting and looking at their options.  The public consultation part of the process could really slow things up, and we want to make sure that we leave ourselves enough time."

Another focus of the Landfill Master Plan will be evaluation of how Carbon Dioxide Gas is managed at the facility in the future.  "From the environmental perspective there are two areas of concern.  One is Leachate, that's the water that bleeds out of the waste.  And we have requirements as to how we can deal with that, because it is nasty water with a variety of different types of contaminants.  The other one that has become more topical right now is greenhouse gases, and carbon footprint.  In Alberta there is something called the Specified Gas Emitters Act.  We currently have to report the amount of gas we produce, and we produce 60,000 tones of gas from our landfill on an annual basis."  A reduction of 12% will be required by law when the city begin producing 100,000 tones annually, and Schaaf added that greenhouse gas management will also be a focus of the Landfill Master Plan.

AECOM Canada of Edmonton was awarded the $699,485.00 contract.