People driving by the Augusta Landfill may notice smoke emanating from the area and conclude that the city dump has caught fire and it has, but officials say there is no immediate cause for alarm.
Augusta Engineering Director Hameed Malik has confirmed that firefighters and landfill workers have been battling an underground, smoldering methane fire at the site for the better part of a week with fire trucks armed with specialized equipment returning again on March 27 to continue to try and battle the flare-ups.
Malik says that there have been no injuries, such as from smoke inhalation, from the fire.
Since methane, a natural by-product of the decomposition process, burns cleanly, the smoke that can be seen from the roadway is from other organic material that is burning along with the natural gas.
“It’s contained to a small area. We’re working and we’ve got it under control, we just want to make sure that area around it cools down before we do something more,” Malik said.
Methane landfill fires are not common, but are not exactly rare either. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Agency on Toxic Substances, the situation is generally caused when too much oxygen becomes present in the emission mixture and can ignite with something as simple as sparks created by a grading machine, a tossed cigarette or other heat source.
Malik says that fighting a landfill fire is completely different from fighting a traditional blaze, such as a house fire. Water or fire retardant foam cannot be used to battle a methane fire and generally can make the situation worse.
“It’s a flame underground and you have to use liquid nitrogen. You have to deplete all of the O2 (oxygen),” Malik said.
The most dangerous aspect of such a fire is not a wider explosion, but rather a collapse underground that can form a kind of flaming sinkhole, but Malik says that he has been assured that there is currently no danger of such a collapse occurring.
Malik also says that, so far, air quality in the surrounding area is not being affected.
“We monitor some 200 to 300 wells and we have to report on that monthly, it is totally separate, this is just a small smoldering fire,” Malik said.
Mayor Garnett Johnson says that both he and City Administrator Tameka Allen have been apprised of the situation and are monitoring the progress.
Scott Hudson is the Senior Investigative Reporter, Editorial Page Editor and weekly columnist for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
