Dig into the the history of Freeway Landfill.
You might have read that Freeway Property ownership has been uncooperative with the MPCA. This timeline demonstrates the decades long back and forth with the MPCA, including an unprecedented amount of testing that has occurred on this site. It also highlights the lack of progress toward a constructive future for the sites, while former landfill sites have been developed around the metropolitan area into everything from Park Nicollet Clinics to Total Wine stores, to Home Depots, office buildings, recreational fields, and more.
A 64 year timeline.
1960
More than 1500 private and municipal dumps in operation in Minnesota.
Mid-1960s
Richard McGowan purchases Freeway properties. City of Burnsville provides permit for operation of Freeway Dump on what is now the Chalet Golf site.
1667
Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) is created.
MPCA is charged with developing rules and programs to protect air and water quality, and granted authority to oversee waste management.
1969
Freeway Dump is closed…
City of Burnsville issues a conditional use permit allowing Freeway Landfill to begin accepting waste.
MPCA issues a state permit for Freeway Landfill to operate.
Federal Resource Conservation & Recovery Act passed which governs the management of hazardous waste; imposing more stringent guidelines on what landfills can accept.
State of Minnesota designates multiple Minnesota landfills as Superfund sites, including Freeway Landfill.
Testing reveals volatile organic compounds. The metals manganese and thallium were detected in groundwater.
EPA adds Freeway Landfill to the Superfund National Priorities List.
Conestoga-Rovers & Associates Limited indicates in their Remedial Investigation Report that The Freeway Landfill does not pose a current risk to human health. The threat of risk to human health in the future is unlikely. They recommend the site be delisted from the Minnesota List of Permanent Priorities and the National Priorities List.
Faced with the choice of upgrading or closing, owners closed Freeway Landfill. At the end of its operational lifetime, an estimated five million cubic yards of waste had been disposed of at the site from Minnesota companies, schools, hospitals, municipalities and more. The approximate 132-acre waste disposal area was covered with a layer of soil.
Owners open Freeway Transfer station on Freeway Landfill property.
Supplemental Remedial investigation performed by Liesch & Associates does not identify environmental conditions requiring additional assessment.
MPCA approves a post-closure plan, and in 1993, following litigation over compliance with closure requirements, MPCA and the Freeway Landfill owner sign a Settlement Agreement that specifies closure requirements, including cover thickness, a minimum 2% slope, and installation of eight gas probes. MPCA and owners continued to work through compliance issues.
Following MPCA guidelines, eight gas-monitoring probes are installed. The owners add additional soil to the landfill cap far exceeding MPCA’s 2 foot requirement by adding an additional 28 feet in many areas providing a much greater buffer to the waste.
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The MPCA commissions a study by Camp, Dresser and McKee which concludes that the Freeway Landfill would not impact the Burnsville well field, water supply, or the Minnesota River, regardless of the pumping at the nearby Quarry.
Public health assessment for Freeway Sanitary Landfill, Burnsville, Dakota County, Minnesota, Region 5. CERCLIS No. v Final report: “Under current conditions, no human exposures to site-related contaminants are known to occur at levels of health concern. Based on currently available information, the Minnesota Department of Health concludes that the site poses an indeterminate public health hazard under current conditions because exposure to volatile gases released to the air is possible, but cannot be evaluated from the very limited information available. Otherwise, there are no indications that people have been, or are being, exposed to site-related contaminants at levels that would be of health concern.”
EPA defers cleanup oversight for the site to the MPCA.
MPCA contracts Woodward-Clyde Consultants to prepare a cover system and gas extraction conceptual design for Freeway Landfill; this was never installed.
A major amphitheater is proposed on the Freeway Landfill site in partnership with the Minnesota Wild. It gains approval from the City of Burnsville and MPCA to develop on the Freeway Landfill site. The project is derailed due to fears of noise from residents in neighboring Bloomington.
MPCA performs a study that includes drilling 74 borings within the waste footprint at the site to show the cover and waste thickness and underlying geology.
Owners open concrete recycling business on Freeway Landfill property.
MPCA’s Closed Landfill Program issues Areas of Concern (AOC) maps for methane and groundwater contamination at the site. Based on the large mass of waste present, the lack of a landfill gas venting system, the lack of landfill gas data, and the potential for gas to migrate under seasonal low permeability (frozen) conditions, the MPCA establishes a methane gas AOC which extends 300 feet beyond the waste footprint. Based on groundwater flow conditions at the site, the MPCA also establishes a groundwater AOC which extends out from the waste footprint.
Freeway Landfill owners hire an environmental consultant to assess the vapors at the property line and methane issues were not identified.
MPCA requests additional work including quarterly sampling of groundwater and landfill gas, and a gas probe evaluation.
EPA notifies MPCA that if MPCA and the owner of the Freeway Landfill did not reach an agreement to clean up the site, EPA would act under CERCLA. On February 5, 2015, EPA sent a General Notice of Potential Liability to the Freeway Landfill owner..
MPCA proposes a cleanup plan for the landfill to the public, contingent on the landfill owner signing a negotiated agreement with MPCA. MPCA’s proposed remedy calls for digging up the waste and completely enclosing it in a protective liner on-site, and installing systems to collect gas and leachate, at an estimated cost of $64.4 million.
Freeway property owners and their consultants are not aligned with the MPCA’s interpretation of environmental risk associated with the properties..
The MPCA installs 10 wells (including nested wells) in the landfill waste footprint.* Deeper nested wells have the potential to be vertical conduits for perched water* contaminants to reach the groundwater table. Three tests completed in that time found contaminants including heavy metals and carcinogenic vinyl chloride, as well as numerous other VOCs.
*Installation of monitoring wells within or directly beneath waste at a landfill site is rarely done. Standard procedures for assessing potential risk from an open or closed landfill is completed by collecting data from outside of the landfill footprint.
*Analyzing perched water from within the waste materials is an indication of what is leaching from the waste materials, however, it should not be used to sensationalize the degree of contamination leaving the landfill property.
The Freeway Landfill owner informs MPCA that he is unwilling to sign the final agreement based on his concern that this agreement would severely inhibit his ability to conduct his current and future businesses.
MPCA notifies the landfill owner that because an agreement to clean up the site through MPCA’s Closed Landfill Program has not been reached, MPCA has requested that EPA initiate the Superfund process where potential parties for depositing waste at Freeway Landfill were
contacted and informed they were liable for the cost of cleanup.
The parties enter into an Access Agreement allowing the MPCA access to perform various soil, groundwater, waste and vapor assessments.
- 35 – Soil borings at Freeway Dump
- 8 – Soil borings at the Transfer Station
- 14 – Test Trenches dug near suspected edge of the waste material
- 9 – Test Trenches dug
Evaluation of the existing monitoring networks at both properties
Downhole geophysical logging* in the existing open borehole wells at both properties
*Downhole logging measures physical, chemical, and structural properties of a rock formation penetrated by a borehole. The data is collected continuously with depth and measured in situ; they can be interpreted in terms of the stratigraphy, lithology, mineralogy, and geochemical composition of the rock formation.
The Minnesota Legislature enacts two pieces of legislation, creating a new class of “Priority Qualified Facilities,” which solely targets the Freeway Landfill and Dump, along with its owners and operators. In connection with the undertaking of environmental response actions, the legislation purports to authorize the MPCA to (among other things) acquire, via condemnation, real property interests at priority qualified facilities and seek recovery of response costs from the owners or operators of such facilities—but not other responsible persons—while simultaneously prohibiting the owners and operators from bringing related claims against other responsible persons and subjecting the owners and operators to civil penalties and other enforcement mechanisms.
October – MPCA proposes two remedial options for Freeway Properties: Dig and Line or Dig and Haul.
November - MPCA requests works plans from contractors for drilling, waste borings, test pits, and sampling and analytical work for the second field sampling event for the remedial investigation.
January – MPCA issues Legislative Report confirming: “Freeway Landfill is currently the only priority qualified facility that is affected by the new legislation.” And that the only actions it had taken in the eighteen months following passage of the May 2017 law were against Freeway Landfill.
March – The Burnsville City Council approves a concept plan to increase the waste capacity at the neighboring Burnsville Sanitary Landfill by 26 million cubic yards. Public documents indicate the BSL expansion was part of a broader plan to remediate the Freeway Landfill.
March – Kraemer Quarry executives quoted in local paper talking about their plan to dig waste from Freeway Landfill and Dump and carry it down their road to the Waste Management Landfill in exchange for $200M to $300M in rights to harvest the limestone under the landfill.
City of Burnsville and Kraemer Quarry representatives unveil a massive mixed-use development valued at $735M for Freeway properties predicated on taking over Freeway Landfill & Freeway Dump – all without the input or knowledge of Freeway Property management.
Spring / Summer
Focused Remedial Investigation Report by Barr Engineering, provides substantial evidence that groundwater flows north, away from the well fields, and the perched groundwater table in the dump waste is already at approximately 710 feet above mean sea level (AMSL), which matches the elevation MPCA predicted for the future if Kraemer Quarry ceased pumping. Barr Engineering concludes: “Based on the current pumping rates at the quarry, and their influence on the groundwater flow direction, the current risk of contaminant migration to these receptors is low.” These factors challenge the previous assumptions about groundwater contamination risks.
Burnsville City Council approves 72-acre expansion of Kraemer Quarry, adding up to another 40 years of life to the Quarry operations.
MPCA and the city of Burnsville grant Burnsville/Waste Management Municipal Landfill an expansion of 13 million cubic yards which will make it taller than Buck Hill. Burnsville Sanitary Landfill has many of the same environmental conditions as the Freeway Landfill, (including approximately 98-acres of unlined landfill), however, they were permitted to expand while the MPCA proposes to dig and haul or dig and line the Freeway Landfill.
Legislation is introduced in the Minnesota House and Senate to allocate $165M to initiate the “Dig and Haul” plan on Freeway Properties. Plan expected to take five years to finish, and cost estimates could go as high as $500M. Legislation doesn’t pass.
Stantec, on behalf of Freeway Landfill collects three surface water samples from the Minnesota River at three locations near the Freeway Landfill and does not identify PFAS contaminants over surface water action levels.
Burnsville Sanitary Landfill performs the first round of PFAS groundwater monitoring and identifies PFAS exceedances in the wells downgradient from the landfill and adjacent to the west side of the Kraemer Quarry and City of Burnsville drinking water source.
March-2024
Burnsville Mayor and City Council endorse vision to develop former Freeway Dump, creating a state-of-the-art golf driving range experience and pickleball facility. Burnsville Chamber of Commerce and Convention & Visitors Bureau pass resolutions supporting the development.
“Drinking water supply wells in the area are tested regularly, and the water currently meets drinking water standards.”
- MPCA WEBSITE
Freeway Landfill & Freeway Dump page
MPCA prepares to solicit bids for Dig and Haul and Dig and Line solutions for Freeway Properties and admits that Kraemer Quarry will submit a bid.