GREENVILLE – State officials do not think corrective actions taken by Greenville over the long term will completely mitigate the groundwater contamination at the landfill.

Paula Clark, director of the Division of Solid Waste Management of the Department of Environmental Protection, said she expects to call municipal officials this week to set up a meeting to determine an appropriate schedule for closing the landfill.

“We don’t plan to go in and demand the landfill must be shut down immediately,” Clark said Friday. “We understand they need to plan for an alternative and its financing.”

About a year ago, the DEP asked town officials to file a closing plan because the landfill, which was managed by a private contractor at the time, was contaminating groundwater.

Hearing that, town officials set out to improve the landfill, hoping to convince the DEP to allow the continued use of the permitted, licensed landfill which has about 30 years of life left.

Meetings were held among the DEP, municipal officials and the town’s engineer, Shawn Small of Civil Engineering Services, Inc., to discuss corrective actions identified by Small.

Small pointed out earlier to the DEP that the Greenville landfill does not violate Environmental Protection Agency compliance standards, hinting of a double standard.

Even at the landfill edge, most of the contamination measured at these facilities does not exceed either Maine’s primary drinking water standards or EPA’s groundwater protection standards, yet the facility does not comply with DEP regulations, he said.

Instead of renewing their contract with the landfill operator, municipal officials gave the maintenance and operation of the landfill back to the municipal public works department for tighter control.

Other efforts were made to mitigate the problems, including the placement of a liner over the landfill.

Whether those and other suggested efforts were acceptable to the DEP has been unknown. As such, selectmen have been in a sort of holding pattern because they have been uncertain about which direction to take – whether to continue to invest money correcting the landfill problems or to work toward the construction of a transfer station.

“We don’t know what the future holds for this facility,” Greenville Town Manager John Simko told selectmen Wednesday.

Simko said earlier that if Greenville’s landfill were closed, the town’s annual budget would increase $150,000 to $250,000 a year for the next 12 to 15 years.

If corrective actions could be made, the annual costs would go up less than $50,000 a year, he said.

Clark recognized that the town was in limbo waiting word from her department. Legislative matters had to be taken care of, and department officials had to review the corrective actions raised by Small, she said.

Meeting with Greenville officials is now on her priority list, Clark said, adding the groundwater contamination is the principal issue.

There have been a number of attempts by the town to put corrective efforts in place, but they don’t seem to make a difference, she said.