March 26, 2026
By TIM HUNDT
The Viroqua Public Works Committee reviewed the preliminary design for a multi-million dollar active methane extraction system during its March 24 meeting. The discussion focused heavily on the placement of industrial blowers and a gas flare required to mitigate the dangerous methane migrating from the old city dump located at the end of Sands Road.
The city has been working to address the methane issue since early 2025 when the gas was discovered leaking by a nearby church. In February the committee chose to pursue an active extraction system estimated to cost over two million dollars because consultants warned a cheaper passive system had less than a 30 percent chance of success in the porous sandy soil. The active system will use underground pipes acting like vacuums to pull the gas out of the ground before it can migrate off the property.
Methane mitigation design and equipment placement
City Engineer Sarah Grainger and environmental consultant Mike Amstadt of TRC presented the first draft of the piping layout to the committee. Grainger explained that the immediate hurdle is deciding where to place the mechanical equipment because the location dictates the slope of the underground pipes. The pipes must be sloped correctly to allow condensation to drain away from the vacuum system.
“The big question because everything is more or less working with gravity so it is a vacuum system, but there is condensation that is created,” said Grainger. “And so then there either needs to be like a slope that always going one direction, or if there is a low spot there has to be a way to bleed off the condensation.”
Amstadt proposed consolidating the equipment into a single location to serve both the east and west landfills. He explained that placing one large skid with two blowers and a single flare would eliminate the need to purchase duplicate equipment for each side of the site. However finding a suitable location is challenging because the equipment cannot be placed directly on top of the buried waste.
“In the East landfill really the only place we can put it is kind of over by behind the church, kind of right up next to the road,” said Amstadt. “The East landfill does not have a good spot to put it where it is not on waste or has a significant slope to it.”
To utilize a single location Amstadt noted the piping would need to cross under the road which creates a low point where condensation could block the vacuum. He told the committee they would need to engineer a trap system connected to the sanitary sewer or a holding tank to manage the water.
The committee also weighed the impact of the continuous noise and the visual of a burning gas flare on the surrounding neighborhoods. Grainger showed maps indicating the proposed location would sit in a low area near the former wastewater treatment plant away from the new Hanson Farm development but relatively close to the mobile home court. She noted the equipment sounds like a cross between a vacuum and a blender and will run continuously.
“This is going to have noise,” said Grainger. “It is going to end up being something that will likely be in an enclosure.”
Amstadt acknowledged that residents might see the flame from the flare at night but suggested they would eventually grow accustomed to it.
“It is possible,” said Amstadt. “But after a while honestly people get used to it and they will call you when I do not see the flame. Why do I not see the flame?”
The estimated cost to install an active methane extraction system is projected to be between $2.2 million and $2.5 million, representing a major financial undertaking for the city as it works to satisfy state environmental mandates. Because the project remains in its preliminary design phase, Amstadt built a substantial 30 percent construction contingency into these estimates. This contingency alone accounts for nearly half a million dollars of the projected total and is intended to cover unknown construction variables, such as the final sizing of the blowers, the logistics of routing a power source, and the potential need to build specialized enclosures to dampen the equipment’s continuous noise.
Beyond the initial construction, local taxpayers will also bear the ongoing, long-term operational expenses of the active system. Running the mechanical blowers—which act as giant vacuums pulling methane from the ground to a central flare—is expected to cost the city between $30,000 and $50,000 annually in electricity and routine maintenance. City Engineer Sarah Grainger corroborated these projections, noting that similar blower equipment currently operating at the city’s wastewater treatment plant costs nearly $4,000 a month in electrical usage. Amstadt has cautioned officials that these operational costs could persist for 20 years or more, as the decaying organic matter buried in the landfill is expected to continue producing methane gas for the foreseeable future.
The committee opted to forward the design discussion to the full city council without a specific recommendation to allow for more time to deliberate the placement.
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