Dogged by heavy rains, flooding and hurricanes, work at the Jefferson Parish landfill continues – NOLA.com

A bulldozer moves trash at the Jefferson Parish Sanitary Landfill in Waggaman, La. Wednesday, July 25, 2018. The landfill on the West Bank of the Mississippi River has come under scrutiny because of horrible smells that have troubled residents on the East Bank and West Bank of the river in Jefferson Parish.
A bulldozer moves trash at the Jefferson Parish Sanitary Landfill in Waggaman, La. Wednesday, July 25, 2018. The landfill on the West Bank of the Mississippi River has come under scrutiny because of horrible smells that have troubled residents on the East Bank and West Bank of the river in Jefferson Parish.
Jefferson Parish is continuing to repair and upgrade its Waggaman landfill in response to severe flooding from summer rains, a process that will divert the trash collected throughout the parish to the nearby River Birch facility until April. 
For residents wheeling carts to the curb and businesses filling dumpsters, the switch to the current arrangement, which occurred in February, has been imperceptible. And it’s being done at the same cost and under the same terms of the original contract. But the delays that have beset the evolving project highlight the difficulties of maintaining infrastructure in an era of global warming and extreme weather.
The saga goes back almost 18 months, when flooding from severe storms in late July 2020 sent water from the Waggaman Canal into the two sections of landfill up next to receive waste — cells 24 and 25. The parish diverted garbage to the private landfill next door, which is owned by River Birch, while crews drained the cells and disposed of the contaminated water to the tune of about $1.5 million.
After a couple of months, cell 24 was ready and the parish landfill began collecting trash again, but engineers decided that a long term plan to divert 1.3 miles of the Waggaman Canal, which ran between the two cells, needed to be done right away, said Mark Drewes, director of the parish’s Department of Public Works.
By February, the $1.2 million canal diversion project was entering the home stretch. But River Birch, which had taken over the contract to operate the parish landfill, agreed with parish officials that cell 25 couldn’t be properly prepped to take trash until the canal work was finished. So the decision was made to divert the trash to the private facility once again. That arrangement was expected to last about five months, Drewes said.
Weeks later, on March 23, another barrage of storms caused flooding throughout the metro area. At the landfill, the section of the canal between the two cells was still connected to the rest of the Waggaman Canal and once again saw water break through its newly heightened protective berms. This flooded the landfill again, specifically cell 25, which River Birch had been preparing to accept garbage. This required even more drainage work, wastewater disposal and time-consuming regulatory approvals, Drewes said.
What’s more, the metro area was entering what would become one of the wettest years in recent history — at one point in July it had rained almost every day for a month — slowing the drainage process and reducing the number of days crews could work. Drewes said it was August before serious work draining cell 25 could begin, and a new target date to reopen the landfill was set at Jan. 11.     
But on Aug. 29, Hurricane Ida made landfall as a Category 4 storm and knocked out power throughout the region. One of the last areas to get power restored was the eastern portion of the west bank, right around the landfill. So after three weeks without power, Drewes said, the parish discovered electrical damage to pump stations at the landfill would take months to fix.
Work was able to resume in November, and River Birch informed the parish last month that cell 25 should be ready and the parish landfill can resume collecting trash on April 1.
The fact that the current work schedule has the landfill reopening on April Fools’ Day isn’t lost on Drewes. But he’s unfazed.
“It’s like any schedule,” he said. “So far, we’ve had good weather and things are moving, but we’ve got a ways to go.”
Drewes said the changes made during the process, although spurred by crisis, were important to the landfill’s ability to operate in an environment of extreme weather. For example, after the first flood event, the parish accelerated another planned, $1.5 million project to double the capacity of a crucial stormwater drainage pipe. This was a major reason why the March 2021 flood recovery, at $30,000, cost so much less than the one the year before. The parish didn’t have to pay River Birch to dispose of any floodwater.
Also, he said, the stretch of former canal, which will now be part of the landfill’s drainage system, has been outfitted with pipes, flap gates and an even higher berm to ensure it doesn’t flood again.
“Extreme weather does cost the parish time and money to clean up the messes caused by it,” he said. “There absolutely is an impact.”
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Email Chad Calder at ccalder@theadvocate.com.
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