Regional closed landfill inventory gets an interactive mapping upgrade

The CAPCOG GIS Program has created an interactive map of the 217 landfill sites identified in the region’s Closed Landfill Inventory making the inventory a more accessible and a practical tool that could benefit initial reviews of properties by prospective landowners, developers, construction contractors, environmental consulting firms, local governments, the state government, and others who may have interest in the data.

The inventory is a document containing more than a thousand pages of plausible closed landfills by county. Before the interactive map, a user would have to search a county’s entire inventory to find a particular site; now every plausible site is denoted geospatially for quick identification. The digital map shows the whole region down to the parcel level and allows users to see the estimated locations of closed landfills that were determined to have a confidence level one through five — five being the most confident. It pairs a digital location with municipal, county, and state records in the Closed Landfill Inventory that justify the site’s determination as a landfill. Since the interactive map uses modern data and the Closed Landfill Inventory has historical information, users can compare changes to properties containing plausible landfills. The interactive map has numerous mapping layers, such as aerial imagery, roadways, and topography, and tools that can help review issues with the site and measure distance and areas around it.

The interactive map is the first enhancement to the region’s Closed Landfill inventory being conducted by CAPCOG’s GIS and Solid Waste programs. Other future updates should include downloaded data and higher quality images of the inventory’s historical documents.

View the interactive map.