The Starkville Board of Aldermen discussed the next steps it will take for the landfill to come in compliance with the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality.
Senior Project Manager John Cunningham of Neel-Schaffer Inc. provided the board with the next steps for the landfill clean up.
Those steps include preparing and approving bid documents, which will include plans, specifications and putting a design project together. Then there will be a public bid opening.
Cunningham said they would look at "shaping" areas, which are too steep, to meet the requirements, and move some waste to other cells to properly place non permeable materials in the cell.
Mayor Lynn Spruill said the city has not yet acquired the remaining portion of the property, but as the city works to gain the property it allows spending to be done periodically.
"It also fits in our ability to do it in kind of a phased monetary expenditure," Spruill said. "So we can hopefully not be hit all at once with the cost of doing this, because it's not going to be an inexpensive process."
Bringing the landfill into compliance will cost the city about $100,000. The county will also pay some of the expenses.
The money will come from the sanitation and landfill funds. If the funds exceed the sanitation and landfill funds, Spruill said it would have to come out of the general fund budget.
"We've got to come back into compliance because anything less will be even more costly," Spruill said. "We are, from a timing perspective, well past where we should have been."
The process for coming into compliance is too complex of a project to provide in house services, making it necessary to bid out for the project.