HAVERHILL — It's called the southern mound — a towering, 35-acre pile of trash and dirt large enough to cover two football fields.
And yes, there's a northern mound. That one's 20 acres around.
Haverhill residents are going to be hearing a lot about the twin towers at the old city landfill on Old Groveland Road in the coming months and years. More to the point, they're going to pay a lot to seal them off — $436,000 a year for 20 years for the southern mound alone. And that's the less expensive one.
In 1999, the federal government ordered the city to cap the landfill, a combined $33.2 million expense that Haverhill taxpayers will share equally with the dump's co-owner, Aggregate Industries of Groveland.
The city and Aggregate have already paid about $6.5 million to remove thousands of barrels of hazardous material buried at the 66-acre site and conduct environmental studies of the land, which borders the Merrimack River and Johnson Creek at the Groveland line.
The landfill opened in the 1930s and closed in the 1970s. Haverhill has been accepting dirt and fill there from around the region for close to four years to set the stage for the capping project that is expected to begin next spring. The city has received about $900,000 the last two years for accepting that dirt.
Last week, Mayor James Fiorentini asked the City Council for approval to borrow $14.4 million to cap the southern mound, which is expected to take about two years, city officials said. Aggregate will pay half of the loan, the mayor said.
The council must approve the loan by the end of June to qualify for a low-interest state loan, Public Works Deputy Director Robert Ward said.
The city is expected to begin paying the southern mound capping loan in fiscal year 2012, he said.
If the city goes with a 20-year schedule, the annual payments will be $436,000, Ward said. Payments on a 30-year note at a slightly higher interest rate would be $338,000.
Andrew Herlihy, the mayor's aide, said city officials are preparing a detailed presentation for councilors in June.
"It's a complicated and very expensive project that we have no choice but to do," Herlihy said. "The new councilors, especially, are going to have to be brought up to speed on this."
Capping the northern mound is expected to begin in 2013 at a cost of $18.8 million, Ward said. Landfills are typically capped with dirt, compacted clay and a synthetic outer covering.
Adding to Haverhill's future financial pressures, the capping project comes as the city is also under federal and state orders to develop new and expensive systems and procedures for cleaning storm water before it washes into the Merrimack River and other local water bodies.
Debt from both environmental projects will eventually add to the $7 million Haverhill must pay each year on debt it acquired in 2000 when it sold its municipal hospital.
Once the entire landfill is entombed, the city must decide what to do with the property. Many communities build athletic playing fields on top of capped landfills, and that's an option Ward said Haverhill is considering. Another option under consideration is installing solar panels or wind turbines on top of the mounds, which would produce electricity the city could use or sell, he said.
Fiorentini said he also wants to build a recreational pathway along the portion of the river that runs along the landfill property, which he said would eventually link to other rail-trail pathways the city is developing.
Apart from Aggregate, the city is seeking financial assistance for the capping project from companies that legally dumped trash at the dump while it was open. Most of those companies are long gone, but some are still around, Herlihy said.
Forcing them to help with the cleanup is a complicated legal process, but the city is negotiating with at least one company to provide some money toward the project, Fiorentini has said.
Federal law allows the owner of landfills to seek money from companies that dumped material there legally if environmental officials deem the property needs special attention, such as a cleanup or capping.
In 2005, the city identified thousands of barrels containing industrial and other hazardous waste buried at the landfill near the Merrimack River. The city's investigation into where the barrels came from failed to identify any responsible companies that are still in existence. But that investigation, which included reviewing dumping and trucking records from the landfill, did help identify companies that legally dumped other material at the landfill.
The last of the 6,676 barrels were removed from the property in 2007, according to city records. Many contained cancer-causing PCPs, paint thinners and solvents likely dumped there illegally by shoe-making companies that dotted the city during the early and mid-1900s, according to Fiorentini. Tests showed none of the barrels had leaked and that soil and groundwater in the area was not contaminated, he said.
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