City official: major landfill remediation projects moving toward cleanup as EGLE grant deadline looms

Tom Wackerman, the city—s longtime consultant with ASTI, told the Rochester Hills City Council on Feb. 3 that the city—s Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) restoration/remediation grant (Grant No. 2023-2540) is moving from assessment toward remediation work at its two largest sites.

Wackerman said the Hamlin Road landfill and the Highland Woodfill (Highland Park Woodfill) have advanced to site-plan review and that remediation plans and development agreements are being prepared simultaneously. "We—re now gonna start engaging you a lot more than we have because we—re moving to the remediation phase in our two biggest projects," he said.

Why it matters: The projects include very large funding requests that the grant committee has not yet approved; Wackerman said the city has received requests totaling about $61 million of the $75 million available under the grant and that the committee has held back two large requests (a $50 million remediation request for Madison Park/Hamlin Road and a prior $9 million request later increased to $17 million for Highland Woodfill) pending fuller…