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JOHNSTOWN - Fulton County supervisors were taken on a tour of the county landfill Tuesday, viewing the site where the new gas-to-electricity project broke ground Monday.

County Department of Solid Waste Director Jeff Bouchard took 10 supervisors - mostly members of the Board of Supervisors' Environmental Resources Committee - on a tour of the 650-acre landfill site on Mud Road in the town of Johnstown. Officials said the tour was especially appropriate this summer, with several projects are happening at the site 20 years after it opened.

"The guys who are running the place up here are doing a helluva job," Environmental Resources Committee Chairman Anthony C. Buanno said after the 45-minute tour.

The Department of Solid Waste is involved in a $6.5 million gas-to-energy project at the landfill. The county in March 2007 contracted with Innovative Energy Systems of Oakfield, Genesee County. The project will allow methane gas from the decomposition of waste at the landfill to be converted into electricity. Bouchard told supervisors it will generate up to 3.2 megawatts-which would be enough to power about 2,400 homes - per year.

The electricity will be used to power the operations at the landfill. The county now uses a gas flare system to burn the methane, leaving its energy potential untapped.

"We didn't like burning it off and not getting anything for us," Buanno said.

Bouchard said plans are being made for an open house at the landfill for several state and local officials in mid-October. On Tuesday, he showed supervisors the site where a stone building will be built by Innovative Energy Systems to house the gas-conversion equipment.

He also showed the area where the county recently completed its first capping project. An 8.5-acre area was closed, and it now must be graded, with a new liner installed and wells tested. He said the next capping project won't be done for several years.

"We can line 105 acres at this facility," Bouchard said, and the facility has 62 years of useful life as a landfill.

The county's effort to develop a water supply at the landfill will "mobilize" next week, he said. The water will be put in a 200,000-gallon tank and will be used for things other than drinking, such as fighting fires. Orchard Earth & Pipe of Syracuse is being paid $772,266 for construction of the water project, and Stilsing Electric of Rensselaer is being paid $92,600 for the electrical part of the project.

The tour also included the landfill scale, leachate tanks and lines, the bulky metals area, the latex paint exchange and the county recycling facility. Bouchard said officials from almost every municipal landfill in New York state have toured the Fulton County Sanitary Landfill.

"We are looked at by a lot of people," he said.

Michael Anich covers Johnstown and Fulton County news. He can be reached at johnstown@leaderherald.com