A decision this week by the New Hanover Board of Commissioners to spend nearly $3.7 million on two county landfill projects will have the county’s environmental management director Joe Suleyman dealing with some big numbers.

Over the next few months, the county will spend $552,664 to construct and equip a facility that will handle the recycling of at least 50,000 tons of construction and demolition (C&D) debris each year.

The second project, construction of a leachate treatment plant to remove heavy metals and other contaminants from rainwater that percolates through the landfill, bears a pricetag of about $3.1 million. It will restore the water, which is collected in the landfill liner, to almost drinking-water standards -- all at a rate about 50,000 gallons per day, Suleyman said Wednesday.

“The treated water that we release back into the [Northeast Cape Fear] river will be cleaner than the river water,” he said.

Both projects will save the county money in the long term by extending the life of the landfill and by reducing maintenance and monitoring costs, county commissioner Beth Dawson said Thursday.

The new C&D recycling facility will consist of a large concrete pad with covered storage to protect recycling equipment and recycled materials, Suleyman said. Trucks will haul C&D waste to the site and dump it on the pad, where the equipment will be used to remove small debris, sort the reusable materials by type and store it until it is sold. Recyclable non-C&D items, such as cardboard, bottles and cans, will be taken to the county’s Materials Recovery Facility, which handles regular recycling.

“Our current process is very primitive, and it’s all out in the open. We have to attack the recycling with manpower -- hand sort and pull out each type of material,” Suleyman said, explaining that the new, more efficient process will handle greater quantities of waste.

While debris from a construction site may look like trash to many people, there is a demand for both used materials and excess from new construction, according to Suleyman.

“Ground sheetrock is mixed in with fertilizer, and there’s a demand already from area farmers,” he said. “Non-chemically treated wood gets ground up and mixed with mulch, boiler fuel and compost. Maybe it could be used for wood pellets in the future. Asphalt shingles can be ground up fine and mixed with hot asphalt for use on roads.”

Dawson said that new regulations from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency require the removal of heavy metals, such as arsenic, mercury and lead, from landfill leachate.

“We knew [the regulations] were on their way for over a year,” she said, adding that the commissioners’ approval Monday of the treatment plant construction contract will enable New Hanover County to comply with the new regulations. Construction funds are in the current fiscal year budget, she said.

The existing treatment plant, which handles about 50,000 gallons of leachate per day, removes only biological contaminants. Once the new plant is in operation, leachate will be treated in a three-step process: removal of biological contaminants as the existing plant does now; use of an ultra-filtration process to remove suspended contaminants; and employment of reverse osmosis – the forcing of liquid through a fine membrane – to remove any remaining toxins.

Currently, water creates an average of 2 million gallons of raw leachate in the landfill per month, Suleyman said.  The new system will treat about 65,000 gallons of leachate per day – which can be increased to a capacity of 75,000 per day with some basic tweaks.

“We’ve been told by the equipment manager to expect 20 percent of brine to be kicked out of the system, so we’ll be back to about 50,000 gallons per day,” he added.

The new water treatment plant must be up and running by the end of July to keep the county from being in violation of the EPA rules. Suleyman expects it to begin operations a month earlier.

Both Suleyman and Dawson emphasized that the top priority in New Hanover County’s waste disposal is extending the life of the landfill and reducing the costs of maintaining and monitoring it. The newly funded projects will help accomplish that goal, Dawson said.

“By taking proactive measures ... we’ll accomplish that goal,” she said, adding that the new C&D facility will remove even more reusable materials from the landfill, while the improved leachate treatment will reduce maintenance and monitoring costs.

The next step, she said, is educating construction companies about recycling as much C&D waste as possible.