RINGGOLD, Ga. — Catoosa Public Works Authority members expressed concern with continued costs to deal with methane at the old county landfill, and delayed a request to seek proposals on a system to keep water out of the well system.

“Was the need for this something you’ve known about all along?” board member Al Smith asked county finance officer Olney Meadows. “Somewhere this needs to stop, or we’ll end up breaking the county.”

Unanimous approval was given to a motion from board member Don Hutelin to perform a cost benefit analysis before seeking vendor proposals for the new system.

“I feel we need more information before deciding on the proposal,” Mr. Hutelin said.

Catoosa officials have added methane wells over the years to a section of the landfill with the initial idea of a flare burner system to dispose of the gas migrating onto neighboring private property at dangerous levels.

The next proposal studied was to connect methane gas wells on two landfill sites and convert the gas for commercial energy sale.

About three dozen methane wells are in place and approval was recently provided to purchase 20 more. This brought the total expense of the wells to in excess of $1 million over about four years.

Mr. Meadows on Monday night that board members approve a request for proposals to design, permit and build an automatic de-watering system to pump water from 17 methane gas wells.