RUBBISH: WHERE DOES IT GO?

Ever wonder what becomes of the trash and garbage we set out on the curb week after week, year after year? Last month I went with a group of curious local residents and students from Mary Baldwin on a tour of Jolivue Land Fill which belongs to the citizens of Augusta County, Staunton and Waynesboro.

Everyone should tour Jolivue. Drive up over the hills and walk about with Mr. Jerry Martin, Director of the Augusta County Service Authority, and hear how the individual cells are constructed, filled, closed and must be monitored for thirty years. Perhaps forever.

We were awed by the sheer magnitude of the landfill operation. Imagine large trucks roaring constantly in across the scales at the gate all day, every day during the week. On a nice Saturday, as many as 1100-1200 cars and pick-up trucks roll in—one vehicle every 18 seconds.

We watched an $118,000 compactor vehicle drive back and forth compressing refuse at the edge of the cell currently being filled. It uses 90 gallons of gas A DAY. We did not see how the flattened materials are gotten into the landfill, but we learned that, at the end of each day, everything is evened out and completely covered with a material like papier-mache. This slurry is used instead of six inches of compacted soil which would take up three feet of air space each week. That would be roughly 150 feet a year and this cell only has eighty feet left. Air space is a valuable commodity.

There don’t seem to be any statistics for what each cubic yard of compressed trash actually costs to collect, haul and process before it goes into a vast opening in the ground, much less what it is going to cost the community to monitor indefinitely.

There are two reasons why our discarded materials can’t just be tossed into a big hole and then covered over with dirt and forgotten. Until visiting Jolivue, I never thought about the byproducts of landfills: Leachate and methane gas. Leachate is the garbage water that percolates through the refuse. Every phase of building, filling and closing these great pits is concerned with 1) siphoning off the contaminated water which travels by pipes set in the base of the cell to nearby holding ponds; and 2) with vertical pipes to control the combustible gas.

To prevent the escape of contaminated water into the surrounding area and into our ground water, the cells of the landfill are lined with 12 inches of bentonite clay, followed by high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and 12 inches of stone. A network of pipes to collect the Leachate is laid with six inches of gravel. When a cell is full, it is capped with the same clay liner and HDPE, followed by dirt and grass.

Nothing in the landfill disintegrates. It doesn’t go away. Not Ever. Hotdogs and newspapers dug up after 20 years look just as they did when they went in. This is a difficult concept. As Mr. Martin put it, “Trash is forever.”

So, unfortunately, is looking after that trash. The layers which line and cover the cells are not foolproof. There is always the danger of degradation which could mean contamination leaking into the ground water for miles around and methane gas escaping past the vertical monitoring pipes.

Once you have seen and heard even a little of how this vast project works, you will never forget: Trash is forever. It isn’t going anywhere.