In a push to promote environmental conservation, Dane County Executive Joe Parisi announced Monday there will be a $20 million landfill expansion in the county beginning this summer.

Dane County Waste and Recycling Manager John Welch said work on the landfill will begin as early as June and the plant will be fully functional by the end of the year.

Welch said the department has been considering the expansion for the last two-and-half years. It is the third installment in a three-part conservation plan, he said.

“We take liquids and we recirculate them back through the system,” Welch said. “The second piece was a factory built in 2012 to recycle household waste, chemicals, paints and batteries.”

These new recycling developments have allowed for more materials that normally would have gone to waste to be reused, Welch said. The landfill expansion is funded by the Dane County Public Works Department, which operates separately from the City of Madison, he said.

The expansion will allow the county to double its production of renewable electricity from decaying trash while avoiding the cost of curb removal to outlying Wisconsin landfills, according to a Dane County statement said. It said curbside removal can be expensive to the taxpayers, because the city would need to raise taxes for trucking garbage out of town.

Construction of a new landfill would have cost $100 million and required the city to use other landfills in Wisconsin, the statement said.