MARSHALL — The Lyon County landfill is looking at the possibility of starting a pilot program to try and separate “forever chemicals” out of landfill runoff. On Tuesday, Lyon County Commissioners gave landfill staff permission to apply for a PFAS treatment grant from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

“If you were agreeable to apply for this grant, we would do a demonstration project on the technology that I think would have the best results for treating leachate at the landfill,” said Lyon County Environmental Administrator Roger Schroeder said. “This grant has a maximum award of up to $500,000, and that would be for the purpose of, what we see as, trying out some PFAS technologies at the landfill.”

Schroeder said the grant funding would allow them to try using gas produced by the landfill as fuel to evaporate leachate. Leachate is a liquid formed by a mix of runoff like rainwater, and decomposing garbage at the landfill.

The question of how to deal with PFAS – short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances – is a challenge facing landfills and wastewater treatment facilities around Minnesota. PFAS are a group of manmade chemicals that have been used to make products ranging from non-stick pans to cosmetics, food packaging and firefighting foam. Because PFAS don’t break down in the environment over time, they can end up in groundwater and drinking water.

Schroeder said the project the PFAS treatment grant would fund would be to try out equipment that would heat and evaporate part of the leachate at the Lyon County landfill. Gas produced by the landfill, which is currently burned off in a flare, would be used by the evaporation equipment instead. After the system had been running a while, they would be able to look at how well it was working to concentrate or remove PFAS from the landfill.

“There’s two vendors that gave us kind of a test option, as it were,” Schroeder said. In addition to paying for the equipment, the landfill would also have to build some pipes to transport leachate from ponds at the landfill, and gas from the landfill flare.

“So all of those activities would be covered under this grant, the cost of the rental units, any kind of infrastructure changes that we would have to do at the landfill, all that will be covered through the grant dollars,” he said. The grant would also have a 10% local match.

Commissioner Rick Anderson said concentrating the PFAS out of leachate still left the landfill with the question of what to do with the chemicals.

“We’re not solving the problem. We’re just concentrating the problem,” Anderson said. “I wish we could get rid of it. And if there’s a proven way to do it that would make more sense, I’d rather put dollars into that.”

“That’s part of our frustration. We’re getting the thumb pushed on us to do something, but there’s really not a fail-safe technology yet,” Schroeder said.

However, commissioners did vote to give Schroeder permission to apply for grant funding for the proposal.

“I think it’s a good opportunity for us to try something, whether it’s going to be great or not,” said Commissioner Todd Draper.