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Commissioners briefed on Smith Gardner landfill monitoring renewal and unbudgeted DEQ assessment request
Summary
County staff sought approval to renew an engineering services agreement with Smith Gardner for closed-landfill monitoring and to provisionally allocate up to $35,000 for a Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) assessment; county officials said the $35,000 would come from the solid-waste contingency fund if needed.
Northampton County staff told commissioners they are seeking to renew an existing service agreement with Smith Gardner Engineers for annual monitoring of the county’s closed landfill and to set aside funds for a newly required state assessment.
The county presented a draft renewal of the 2015 service agreement for Smith Gardner, which performs monitoring of methane/groundwater and other post-closure obligations for the solid-waste facility. Staff said the annual monitoring contract was budgeted for the current fiscal year but that the Department of Environmental Quality recently requested additional contamination assessment and cleanup monitoring, including PFAS-related testing, that had not been anticipated.
County staff requested authorization to allocate up to $35,000 from contingency for those assessments if the DEQ requirement triggers further work. “This additional funds request has not been budgeted,” a staff presenter said, noting he only learned of the DEQ notice in July. Finance staff explained the county has roughly $159,000 in the solid-waste contingency balance and an approximately $400,000 general contingency typically budgeted annually.
Commissioners pressed staff for clarity about which contingency fund would be used; staff confirmed the amount would come from the solid-waste contingency if needed. Several commissioners raised concerns about past audit citations for budget overspending and requested that staff provide clearer documentation of contingency balances and a plan before moving forward with non-budgeted expenditures.
No formal contract approval occurred at the meeting; staff said the service agreement renewal is budgeted for the annual monitoring and that the county will return to the board if further action is required to fund the DEQ assessment beyond the contingency allocation.
