Concerns questioning the design and safety of the proposed DeKalb County Landfill expansion plans were raised in testimony during yesterday’s hearing.

Rodney Engstrom, owner of the landfill located near the intersection of Somanauk Road and Interstate 88 in Cortland, expects that the 38-acre site will be filled to capacity by summer.

The application for expansion proposes the addition of a 26-acre landfill as well as a vertical expansion for part of the existing 33-year-old site, which has not been expanded since 1972. The entire expansion would add an additional 15 years of life to the landfill, Engstrom said.

Without expansion, the landfill would have to shut down when it reaches capacity, he said. Costs easily could increase three to five times if waste material had to be transported and dumped in Geneva, the nearest landfill that will accept the material.

Gerald DeMers, a consulting environmental engineer for Graed, Anhalt, Schloemer and Associates Inc., said during testimony before the DeKalb County Landfill Committee that he could recommend the approval of the new site adjacent to the landfill if some “minor changes” were made to the application.

However, DeMers, a witness from the county’s consulting firm, said he could not approve of the proposed vertical expansion for the existing landfill because of “the potential for environmental contamination.”

The consulting firm found several problems with the vertical expansion, but DeMers said the major concerns focused on the question of the landfill’s means of removing leachate and the existence of a compacted liner to prevent seepage.

DeMers said leachate is rainwater which can carry contamination as it percolates through the ground. “If you saw it (leachate) in a glass it would be dark and smelly,” he said.

Further difficulties involved in recommending the expansion centered around an inability to determine a definite groundwater direction flow. DeMers said groundwater sampling revealed “some contaminants exceeding state ground and water drinking levels,” however the actual health threat posed by this is not necessarily that great.

Roger Steimel, 811 Somonauk Road, said he has lived across from the landfill for the past 42 years, and said he is encouraging the county to find alternative sites for the landfill in addition to a serious recycling effort. “We’ve got ourselves in a box. The county should have been working on this two to three years ago,” he said.

Steimel said the horizontal expansion is the only alternative for the time being, “but they want to go above and beyond (the existing landfill) and that is not acceptable.”

After six hours of testimony, the committee adjourned the hearing until 1 p.m. Friday when additional information and remaining testimony can be heard.

Ray Bockman, administrative aide for the DeKalb County Board, said after the hearing is completed, the six-member committee, composed of the county’s planning and consulting committee, is responsible for making a recommendation to the county board.”