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St. Helens council OKs engineering work on lagoon cell using existing grants; larger landfill plan scaled back
Summary
After a technical update on the Central Waterfront/Lagoon project, councilors agreed by consensus to use remaining state grant funds to advance engineering for a constrained fill cell (Cell A) and to preserve options for a future wastewater treatment plant, while shelving a larger landfill/transload approach because of geotechnical, seismic and cost constraints.
Seth, the city’s principal planner, told the St. Helens City Council on Feb. 18 that a decade of study and recent site work have changed the project’s outlook, and recommended advancing engineering for a smaller, shallower cell rather than pursuing the original full-scale landfill and transload concept.
The move follows recent drilling and environmental studies that identified three major constraints: widely varying depth to bedrock in the lagoon, liquefaction risk in silty deposits and a liner at risk of flotation because of groundwater and river levels. "We found there are very significant differences in the depth to bedrock depending on where you are in the lagoon," Seth said. The constraints, he added, have design mitigations but also raise costs.
Why it matters: the original concept had relied on the potential to accept dredged…
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