EL PASO, Texas (KFOX14/CBS4) — El Paso is expanding its landfill to keep pace with rapid growth and a surge in daily trash, a $20 million project city leaders say will add about 12 years of capacity — even as they plan for what comes next.

The city announced this week that it is adding six new landfill cells across 65 acres at the Greater El Paso Landfill. According to the city of El Paso, crews moved more than 2 million cubic yards of dirt and installed liners designed to protect soil and groundwater.

Nicholas Ybarra, the city of El Paso’s environmental services director, said the amount of waste coming in has climbed sharply in recent years.

“So it’s a constant calculation with our office staff and our field staff out at the landfill to make sure we’re meeting the disposal capacities for the city and as we’ve seen since COVID we’ve gone anywhere from 1500 tons per day to close to 2000 tons per day just in those those five years so it’s increased quite a bit,” Ybarra said.

Ybarra said the city tracks remaining landfill space and how quickly it is being used, including regular surveying.

“We’re always doing surveys throughout our property quarterly to determine how much land, how much airspace, which is a disposal capacity that we’re using within the landfill,” he said.

When a landfill reaches capacity, Ybarra said it is sealed with a final cover.

“But when you reach its capacity, as you’ve seen at the landfill, what we do is we put a final cover on top of the landfill, which consists of three feet of dirt and then six inches of rock armor,” he said.

After closure, the landfill enters a long-term monitoring process regulated by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. To avoid running out of space, Ybarra said planning for new disposal areas begins years in advance.

“Typically, when we’re excavating and doing construction projects for new sites, we’re typically about two and a half years out from when we’re reaching capacity at our current cells, whichever we’re working on, because through the design process and construction, it takes about a year and a half to two years to get everything completed,” he said.

Even with the new cells, Ybarra said the city is already looking ahead.

“These six new cells will give us 12 years of disposal capacity, but I’m still, I’m already planning ahead for the next permit that we’re looking at with the city of El Paso,” he said.

Work tied to the expansion includes new infrastructure and environmental monitoring systems. Phoenix General Contractors. Those overseeing the completion of the project said crews were in the early stages of installing a water well and expected to finish in about a month.

“So right now we’re probably on the first week,” Kalum Anchondo with Phoenix GC said. “It’s taking about five days or so to go ahead and get the first water well going. And we’re expected to probably finish out here in a month or so.”

Geologist Andrew Yuhas said he is overseeing the installation of monitoring equipment, including groundwater wells and landfill gas probes.

“I am here to be the geologist of record to log and observe the installation of two new groundwater wells, groundwater and water reservoirs, and five landfill gas monitoring probes,” Yuhas said.

Yuhas said groundwater beneath the landfill is sampled periodically and tested for quality.

“Groundwater is present beneath the landfill, obviously, and most of El Paso and the Aquifer; they are drilled deep enough to intercept groundwater and it is sampled on a periodic basis, which I’m not exactly sure here, and analyzed the laboratory for quality,” he said.

He added that monitoring is essential.

“That water quality should understand that facilities like this are required to be very diligent about their monitoring,” Yuhas said.

City leaders say the landfill expansion is only part of a broader strategy that also includes recycling programs, material reuse and new equipment intended to reduce what ends up in the landfill. Ybarra said the city is working to maintain long-term capacity.

“So we’re looking at permitting additional land as soon as possible to have at least a minimum of 20 years of landfill capacity at any time,” he said.

For now, the additional space is expected to buy time as El Paso continues to manage thousands of tons of trash each day, while officials look for longer-term solutions beyond expanding landfill acreage.

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