FLORENCE — The City Council could decide today to renew a contract with a company to study groundwater flow at the now-closed sanitary landfill.

Highland Technical services could be awarded the contract to complete the groundwater monitoring, as required twice yearly by the Alabama Department of Environmental Management.

“We’re going to get another company to do the testing and find out what the problem is with the groundwater,” said Council President Dick Jordan, referring to an engineering company contract that is expected to be on the Dec. 18 meeting agenda.

Past monitoring and testing at the landfill has revealed an anomaly in a corner of the landfill that shows groundwater is not flowing in the direction expected, as compared to other parts of the landfill. That corner of the landfill is suspected by some of being one of the sources of discolored and foul-smelling water in springs and nearby Cypress Creek. The Alabama Department of Environmental Management has ordered the city to continue monitoring the situation and devise a corrective plan.

The council will meet at 10 a.m. today at the Marriott Conference Center for an extended work session. The regular meeting begins at 5 p.m. in the City Hall auditorium on Pine Street.

The landfill became the most divisive issue of the previous administration. For more than a year, the council was deadlocked 3-3 on closing the nearly full landfill. The matter was further complicated by the council’s earlier purchase of the former Florence Golf and Country Club for just more than $1 million with the intent to use a portion of it to expand the adjacent landfill. In the end, the landfill ran out of space, and the council voted to hire a contractor to haul household and commercial garbage to a regional landfill from a transfer station.

Robert Palmer can be reached at 256-740-5720 or robert.palmer@TimesDaily.com.