The attitude of Newport council - everyone, really - seems pretty nuts to me. $7 million is about 185 kilos of gold. Imagine what would happen if someone lost that in a rubbish tip!
Look forward to treasure hunters attacking the site though.
Bitcoin disks may be the future of buried treasure.
They say the drive could be "3 or 4 feet deep" - let's just call that one metre. So it's only 7140 cubic metres to search.
Admittedly, that's 7140 cubic metres of foul trash. It will include soiled babies diapers, rotting food, female sanitary products, tins, bottles, etc etc.
Assuming you could find the drive at a cost of one million. (roughly £140 per cubic metre) That'd give you 6 million to share between you and the council.
I guess you could add some environmental fixing thing in there (removing any electronics that are found, recycling any glass or metals vent methane, etc, and give them £2m, and keep the rest?
This sounds like it would be an incredibly unwise and risky investment, even if you pretend that you will definitely find the hdd.