Minnesota landfill gets $21M PFC cleanup

Call it Lake Elmo's Big Dig. Beginning this summer, enough garbage will be removed from the Washington County Landfill to fill the Metrodome five times. "Look at this–it's the size of a football stadium," shouted Jeffrey Lewis over the racket of bulldozers as he pointed to an enormous pit this month. "And this is only one-eighth of it." Lewis, who manages landfill cleanups for the state, is chasing an environmental bogeyman–PFCs, or perfluorochemicals–made by 3M Co. The clear, odorless PFCs are seeping into the soil from 2.5 million cubic yards of garbage. So Lewis is overseeing the effort to dig up the entire 60-acre site, install liners and replace the garbage. At $21 million, it easily will be the most expensive landfill cleanup in state history.