Crews are busy installing new cells at the St. Louis County landfill in Virginia. It will be enough to hold 18 years worth of garbage.

What’s unique this time, is that the expanded area includes a geothermal field. It means special pipes are laid on the plastic liner. And those will capture the heat from the decomposing garbage.

Steve Pellinen, Senior Planner for Environmental Services, said, “This is first time in the state of Minnesota, where a geothermal field is being installed at a landfill. We’ve had people from the state come up and look, and say why haven’t we done this before?”

The heat from the field will heat the soon-to-be-built leachate treatment plant.

A new focus of the plant will be to prevent forever chemicals, also known as PFAS, from getting out into the environment.

The goal is to be using the new landfill cells by the end of the year. And have the leachate plant finished by the end of 2026.

NTS and Stantec Consulting Services, are also key to the project.