SANITARY LANDFILLING
Report on a Joint Conference sponsored by the
National Solid Waste Management Association
and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,
November 14-15, 1972, Kansas City, Missouri
These proceedings (SW-5p) were compiled
by JAMES E. DELANEY
for the Office of Solid Waste Management Programs
U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
1973
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Mention of commercial products does not
constitute endorsement by the U.S. Government
An environmental protection publication (SW-5p)
in the solid waste management series
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FOREWORD
* The primary objective of the two-day conference reported on in this pub-
lication was to provide an opportunity for State solid waste officials and
representatives from the private and public sectors involved in the design
and operation of sanitary landfill sites to have an open discussion and
mutual exchange of ideas on questions of vital concern to both. We believe
this objective was attained in an outstanding manner, thanks to the expert-
ise and enthusiasm of all the speakers and floor commentators. We hope
that all who attended will benefit from reading this publication and re-
viewing what was said. The conference also constituted the First Congress
of the National Sanitary Landfill Institute of the National Solid Wastes
Management Association (NSWMA).
Within the limitations outlined below, this report is a record of the
remarks made by designated speakers both in their formal presentations and
in response to questions from the floor. Also included are the comments
of other participants who elaborated on or disagreed with some of the
opinions voiced.
J Because of the recording method employed, no claim is made that this
report reflects with complete accuracy every word spoken from the podium
* or the floor. The reporter repeated into a tape recorder the words—as
well as he could comprehend them—of each speaker and other participants.,
and the tapes were later used to produce a transcript. No prepared texts
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were available to check, the accuracy and completeness of the transcript.
Administrative announcements, "asides", and incomplete or repetitions
comments have been deleted. Certain presentations depended on the use of
slides to such a degree that little textual material was available. In
these instances, a Synopsis is provided that is designed to cover, in a
general way, the subject matter discussed. (These presentations are marked
with an asterisk in the Contents pages.) All the substantive somm&nts
made by the speaker and other commentators in the ensuing question and
answer session are reported. To preserve the "shirtsleeve" atmosphere
that prevailed during the conference, no effort has been made to formalize
the language used in the presentations.
The cooperative spirit of Eugene Wingerter, Executive Director, NSWMA,
and his staff was instrumental in making the conference a success. Donald
Townley and his staff in the EPA Kansas City Regional Office also provided
valuable assistance in making the conference an event to remember. Finally,
James Delaney, Writer-Editor of my staff, had the formidable task of editing
the rau manuscript and putting the document into a usable form.
—JOHN T. TALTY
Office of Solid Waste Management
Programs
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CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
John Vanderveld 2
David Dominick 3
Charles Wheeler 7
. Samuel Hale, Jr. 9
PANEL A: SELECTING SANITARY LANDFILL SITES
' MODERATOR: John Talty
HOW TO SELECT AND ACQUIRE.A SANITARY LANDFILL SITE
Peter Vardy 24
EFFECTS OF INDUSTRIAL AND HAZARDOUS WASTES ON SITE
LOCATION
Donald Andres 32
DESIGNING A RURAL SANITARY LANDFILL SYSTEM*
Fred Cope 43
PANEL B: SANITARY LANDFILL ENGINEERING AND CONSTRUCTION
MODERATOR: John Vanderveld
LAYOUT AND ENGINEERING OF SANITARY LANDFILL SITES
William Harrington 52
ENGINEERING SANITARY LANDFILL SITES FOR VARIOUS
CLIMATIC CONDITIONS
William McKie 61
ACHIEVING MAXIMUM COMPACTION IN A SANITARY LANDFILL*
Wayne Trewhitt 67
# THE NEW EPA SANITARY LANDFILL GUIDELINES
Truett DeGeare 76
*Because the presentation involved use of visual material,
only a synopsis of the remarks is given here.
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PANEL C: DEVELOPING SANITARY LANDFILL PROGRAMS
MODERATOR: Gerald Neely
THE ROLE OF THE STATE IN LAND DISPOSAL
Floyd Forsberg 92
OBJECTIVES OF EPA MODEL LANDFILL DEMONSTRATIONS
Jack DeMarco 101
DEVELOPING REGIONAL LAND DISPOSAL PROGRAMS
Don Berman 106
THE MARC LANDFILL PROJECT
Michael Lawlor 113
THE MILWAUKEE TRANSFER SYSTEM LAND DISPOSAL PROGRAM
Harold Smith 121
PANEL D: NEW APPROACHES TO LAND DISPOSAL
MODERATOR: Eugene Wingerter 129
LANDFILLING OF MILLED REFUSE*
Dr. Robert Ham 130
LANDFILLING OF BALED REFUSE*
William Faulkner 141
EPA BALED LANDFILL DEMONSTRATION
Ora Smith 142
CONSIDERATIONS FOR RAIL HAUL LAND DISPOSAL PROGRAMS
David Blomberg 151
EPA PLANS FOR RAIL HAUL DEMONSTRATION
Clyde Dial 159
THE NEED FOR LAND USE POLICY
H. Lanier Hickman, Jr. 173
REGISTRATION LIST 178
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INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
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John Vanderveld*
The response to this entire session is extremely gratifying.
Initially it was set up to have 200 people, but the response was
such that the number was expanded to 250, and we still had to turn
away about 60 people which we could not accommodate.
The attendance at this conference has been a real first in
the entire industry of solid waste management. We have represented
in the room today members from legislative, planning, engineering,
and operations in solid waste management.
We have representatives here from large areas as well as from
smaller, rural areas. We have been working for a number of years
in a very encouraging way and with the kind of relationship that
really makes everything worthwhile. It really gives the kind of
encouragement that a person needs in a relationship with the EPA
and the private industry.
The private sector has been working in the operating end of the
business and has been working in a real close partnership with
representatives of government.
There is a wealth of talent going to be coming before you
during this two-day period, and I think we have an excellent
opportunity to share some of the problems, some of the ideas,
some of the concepts that each of you have.
The way we can all gain in our expertise is by sharing our
thoughts, sharing our problems, sharing our ideas. We'll have an
opportunity for that during this two-day period.
*Chairman, Sanitary Landfill Institute, NSWMA and Senior Vice
President, Browning-Ferris Industries, Houston, Texas
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David Dominick*
This institute is the first of its kind, jointly sponsored
by EPA and the National Solid Wastes Management Association. It's
a good example of the kind of public-private partnership that we
need to see much more of.
The private sector can play, and in the past has played, an
important role in solid waste management. I see an even expanded
role for the private sector in the future. But it seems to me that
in the past we have not given enough attention to the interplay
between the public and the private sector.
We need to ensure that we have optimum efficiency in solid
waste collection and disposal and adequate protection of the public
interest.
What is this interplay? How can it be improved? I think that's
one of the primary purposes of this meeting, particularly the inter-
play between the public and private sector at the State level.
I'm most pleased that in setting up this institute the decision
was made to invite representatives of all the States. I'm very glad
that most of the States are here, because I think that in some situ-
ations in the past, where there has been an absence of adequate
regulatory authority, we have seen a situation develop where equal
competition is not being fostered.
There are situations where the good operators are using proper
methods and bearing the costs for those methods while a lot of other
people are getting away with less than proper disposal practices.
I think you need to examine the question of the role of government
and particularly the role State agencies should play in ensuring equal
competition in solid waste management.
I hope that your deliberations today and tomorrow will go beyond
the technical aspects of sanitary landfill design and operation,
important as those aspects are, and focus on some other important,
very important issues as I see them.
*Assistant Administrator for Categorical Programs, U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency.
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We're concerned about the adverse health, environmental, and
related impacts, not only of traditional residential, coimercial,
and industrial wastes but of the many types of hazardous wastes which,
as air and water pollution controls tighten, are being disposed of on
the land.
We had a meeting the other day on implementation of the ocean-
dumping legislation. As you know, the Congress passed legislation
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this year in four of the five areas that the Environmental Protection
Agency and the Administration sought legislation. We got bills
covering water pollution control, noise, ocean dumping, and pesticides.
We did not get a bill in the toxic substance area. I hope we'll be
able to get that reintroduced and passed by the next Congress.
But regarding the ocean-dumping bill and its implications, it
will require a permit system and basically counting off immediately
a number of highly hazardous wastes which in the past have been dumped
into the ocean, such as chemical warfare agents and high-level radio-
active wastes. Then, through the permit system, a reduction and a
careful minimization of the amounts of materials going into the ocean
are to be effected. Since we're cutting off the ocean as a repository
for waste, where are those wastes going to go?
Additionally, we're beginning to tighten down very heavily in the
air and water pollution control area.
We're picking up wastes from scrubbers. We're picking up wastes
in our sludges. Where are these going to go? And the usual answer
is into the land, into the land. How are we going to properly regulate
that?
Please address those questions in this conference and the
question of what you think should be done at the State and at the
National level with regard to the increasingly hazardous materials -
that we're beginning to have to deal with as these other avenues of
disposal are cut off. ^.
We are frankly very disappointed that the regulatory progress of
all but a very few States in even the non-hazardous waste area, much
less adequate controls in areas of hazardous wastes, is practically
non-existent.
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I think that in terms of the resources that have been brought to
bear, in terms of skilled administration in the regulatory area, and
in terms of adequate performance in protecting public health and pro-
viding environmental protection, our solid waste management agencies
are running a poor third to air and water pollution agencies. I think
that we need to do something to reverse this situation, to bring ade-
quate administration and attention into this area.
You State people have a massive job to do to correct this situation
in your own States. You can work with one another, you can work with
the Federal people, and you can certainly get some ideas from your
counterparts here in the private sector.
The need for adequate legislation is the subject on which we're
focusing our attention this year. We will have a number of legislative
options, which will be discussed both formally and informally, and we
hope that you will give careful attention to them.
A second major item I'd like to talk about is regionalization.
We've talked about it for a long time, particularly in the form of
regional disposal authorities, as a good thing both economically and
environmentally in solid waste management. But the sad truth is that
too few such authorities have emerged.
And, as in the case of Des Moines, for instance, those that have
emerged certainly have not done so easily. We ought to have many
examples of regional landfills and regional disposal authorities.
But the fact of the matter is, we don't.
The Federal Government had to fund one here in the central region
of the United States for the sole purpose of showing the people in the
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rest of the States in this area that we can reach our goals if we pay
enough attention to it, if we put enough money into it, and if we get
governmental authorities together. We had to fund that separately
to show that it could be done. It's worth addressing here, the issue
of what more can and should be done to foster regional approaches.
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Thirdly, we'll be discussing with you the draft sanitary land-
fill guidelines. We're going to be very aggressive in soliciting
your views on these draft guidelines, not only from a technical
point of view but also from a cost-benefit point of view.
What, for example, would be the economic and environmental
implications of requiring the use of daily cover for an isolated
town of 500 persons in the middle of Nevada? Or for a community
in the middle of the rainiest region in Oregon, or the driest region
in Oregon? Between the western part of that State to the eastern
part you will find totally different conditions. I understand we
have some people here from Moscow, Idaho. Perhaps the small-community-
point of view should be very vigorously represented by them and others.
More important, what can be done to take into account such geo-
graphical and other considerations while still fulfilling the intent
of the guidelines as a means of ensuring environmentally sound land
disposal practices?
Finally, as Sandy Hale will discuss, we're just beginning to
identify and talk about what we think are major issues in proposing
legislation to take the place of the Resource Recovery Act of 1970.
Your views will be important. We solicit your critical comments
not just on sanitary landfills but also on those problems and oppor-
tunities which you in the front line of solid waste operations around
the country see as most important.
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Charles B. Wheeler*
I have an unusual background for a politician, because I
am a pathologist, that is, I run a medical laboratory and I also
have a law degree. I took two degrees because I wanted to go into
a field called forensic pathology and I actually started my
political career about eight years ago by running for coroner.
After being coroner a couple of years, I became a County
Commissioner or, as we call them, a County Judge, and spent
four years on the bench running Jackson County.
I got whipped once when I ran for Presiding Judge but was
more successful in the race for Mayor. So I wind up as about the
only politician in the United States who can stand up and publicly
admit that he makes his living by taking blood from the public.
With a medical background, as you might well imagine, I have
a great interest in the problems that pollution creates for the
human body. I have been very vigorous in my efforts to improve
our pollution programs, and I've gotten excellent cooperation from
the Environmental Protection Agency. Together we collaborated on
a bond issue last August that the voters approved by about 68 to 32
percent that provides the city with 8.3 million dollars for
solid waste disposal.
I face all the problems of an elected official. We have
only a limited number of ravines and most of them seem to be
close to flowing streams and those that are available seem to be
quite some distance from the urban center. We also have transportation
problems because of the limited number of bridges across the rivers
that we have in this area.
In addition, we have many jurisdictional problems because of
State lines and county lines and many suburban communities. We are
a regional thinking group here in Kansas City. We have a Mid-America
Regional Council to which we are purposely assigning more and more
responsibilities.
*Mayor, Kansas City, Missouri.
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They have done an outstanding job with their sanitary
landfill, a far better job than the City of Kansas City was able
to do with a similar project. So my thinking is regional thinking,
and I do want to develop programs in water, air and solid wastes
that can be managed by this particular agency.
I want to close by saying I'm particularly interested in
recycling land after the solid waste is decomposed. I recognize
this as an area that has not been studied long enough to have
facts and figures, but it seems to me that we would all agree
that burying solid wastes is the logical answer for most of our
problems.
You can recycle about 30 percent of your solid waste before
you bury it, but you've got to bury 70 percent of it. I would prefer
to bury it approximately 10 years and then recycle it. Let nature
do a lot of the decomposition. But I recognize the fact that certain
substances are getting in very short supply and we have to go back
and reclaim those for future generations. These are the things that
really interest me.
I commend you all for coming to Kansas City for this conference
and I hope a great deal of good comes out of it.
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Samuel Hale*
I'd like to first of all reiterate something that Dave Dorainick
said. And that is, it seems to us that this kind of public-private
forum should have been held long ago.
I hope not only that we can use this forum to talk about sanitary
landfill, which is the subject we're going to address ourselves to in
the panels, but that we can continue using such forums as a means of
discussing a whole host of other issues which we think are equally
important. We've already had discussions with NSWMA as well as within
EPA to continue meetings of this sort in the future.
As most of you know, the Resource Recovery Act of 1970, the Act
under which we're currently operating, expires June 30, 1973. We're
just beginning to consider the options about where we're going to go
in terms of making our own proposals, what Congress is likely to be
thinking about, and so forth.
It seems to us this is the right time to present to you, at the
State level, the local public level, and the local private level some
of the major issues, as we see them: some of the problems, potential
solutions, and other issues from the Federal Government's point of
view. You can then be thinking about some of the same kinds of prob-
lems for one sole reason; that is, if we're going to really respond
to the problems you see, it's very important that you begin considering
them now and make your views known in the very near future. For the
State people in particular, we're going to try to discuss some of
these issues tonight.
We see essentially three problems facing "Solid Waste Management"
today, and it will become clear later why I inserted the quotes.
First, obviously, are the health, environmental, and related
impacts associated with every waste, but the ones I think have been
*Deputy Assistant Administrator for Solid Waste Management Programs,
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
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ignored in the solid waste community by and large up to now are the
adverse impacts of hazardous wastes. In using this term, I'm talk-
ing not just about solid waste but also about liquids and sludges
as well. That is, it's time that we, the solid waste community,
start looking at not only solid waste, and not just particularly
municipal solid waste, but at all the things that are ultimately
going to be disposed of on the land.
I think it is particulary important as we begin tightening up
on air and water pollution controls, as we begin taking actions on
disposal sites that are going to create disposal problems, as we
begin shutting off the ocean as a possible disposal alternative, to
understand that more and more pressure is going to be put on the land.
The land is the one repository that at this point is just not
adequately regulated. We've got to consider what to do to protect
the land in the same way that we're protecting the air and the water,
including the oceans.
Let me make two additional points about this problem. Unlike
the problem of, say, auto emissions, and with the possible exception
of certain hazardous wastes, we're talking largely about using today's
knowledge and technology to solve a problem we know how to solve.
The point is, we know how to solve the problem now but in most
areas we simply aren't doing it. There are many reasons why that's
so: political reasons, institutional reasons, managerial reasons.
I believe the primary reason is simply that, in the absence of ade-
quate regulations, adequate standards, adequate enforcement of these
standards, there's a very strong incentive to use the land adversely.
Something must be done, just as in the cases of air and water, to
take steps to assure that we are going to protect the land.
Next, I would reiterate the point I made earlier that we're no
longer limiting ourselves to the separate municipal solid waste prob-
lem that we've been talking about for years. Rather, we're concerned
with a problem that goes well beyond that to include all wastes that
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are going to be disposed of on the land, whether they are solids,
liquids, or sludges. The thinking over the next two days must reflect
this broader approach to the problem. We must start talking more
about hazardous wastes, more about non-solid wastes, more about non-
municipal wastes.
The second problem that we see, and one that's not so obvious,
but is particularly critical at the local level, is that of low
productivity of solid waste management systems. We have studied
many systems of public agencies and private institutions around the
country, and the conclusion we draw is this: most of those agencies
and institutions are,far less efficient than they ought to be. For
a host of reasons most cities, whether they have public or private
service, are paying much more for solid waste collection and, to a
lesser extent, disposal than they need to be paying for a given level
of service.
Let me cite a couple of instances. We've been able to go into
certain cities—Cleveland for example—that have been willing to take
steps to try to build a more efficient collection system; and with
very simple techniques, we've been able to save them 20, 30, 40 per-
cent or more of their collection costs.
Mai.y cities that have converted to private collection have
experienced similar savings. A lot of them have been able to make
these improvements on their own. But the number of cities with
efficient systems is still a very small part of the total. We feel
very strongly, after examining many cities across the Nation, that
most of them are paying too much for solid waste management.
This fact really has two impacts. One is that it makes it
much tougher to engage in any kind of environmental upgrading.
Taxpayers simply are unwilling to pay more for solid waste management
when they see a lot of inefficiency in the system now. It really
hurts when it comes time to say you're going to have a sanitary
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landfill rather than an open dump. The other impact is that tax-
payers and consumers alike are simply paying too much for solid
waste management when there are some very simple steps that could
be taken to substantially reduce costs. So we would cite low
productivity as a second kind of "solid waste management" problem.
The third problem is really two problems. It's much, much
more difficult to put concisely into words, but basically it is
the problem of the decline in resource recovery and resource con-
servation.
We've conducted a number of studies on the benefits of resource
recovery and we can cite a number of benefits of either resource
recovery or resource conservation. Two benefits, for instance, are
the avoidance of the cost of any adverse health and environmental
impacts associated with waste disposal, and reduced environmental
impact in the production of goods. For virtually every material
category we've looked at we find that using secondary materials rather
than primary materials generates less air and water pollution, gener-
ates less mining and processing wastes, uses less resources, such as
energy, and fresh water. It also requires less dependence on foreign
raw materials.
If you catalog all these benefits you come out with a fairly
substantial list. Yet the fact is that over the past two decades,
in fact since World War II, resource recovery for virtually every
major category has been declining relative to the GNP, relative to
production and so forth. In other words, secondary materials are
becoming less attractive to a producer. At the same time, from
society's point of view, they are becoming much more attractive.
The second aspect of the problem we would cite is basically
this: waste loads are growing at a much faster rate than the GNP
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and population are increasing, and at the same time those waste
loads are becoming increasingly difficult to dispose of, because
of the addition of such materials as PVC or PBC and so forth.
Also, waste loads are increasing at a very rapid rate because of
changing consumer habits such as demands for increased packaging,
and those greater quantities of wastes are becoming more difficult
to dispose of. Finally, less and less of those wastes are being
recovered.
These, I think, are the three major problems as we see them
in solid waste management, broadly conceived. We realize this goes
substantially beyond what's been the traditional role of solid waste
management. We think these are the kinds of issues we have to begin
to address as we determine Federal policy, as the States determine
State policy, in fact, as the localities determine their policies.
What I'd like to do in the next couple of minutes is basically
this: one, relate current Federal solid waste programs to those
problems I've just described and, two, spell out a couple of the
issues that relate directly to you at the State and local level.
First of all, let's look at how the OSWMP, that is, the Federal
solid waste program, stacks up against the problems I just mentioned.
Frankly, it doesn't stack up very well. I think all of us recognize
there have been substantial gains since we passed the first Solid
Waste Disposal Act in 1965. Most States had no programs in 1965;
now we see over 400 people at the State level in solid wastes, and
local level competence has come up substantially. There are a lot
of examples of what can be done in solid wastes now that couldn't
be done in 1965. Despite this progress, however, we believe that
in the aggregate, most solid waste management systems still rate
very low in terms of both environment and economics. We're paying
too much on the one hand, and we're not doing a good environmental
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job on the other. As evidenced by our Mission 5000 survey this
summer, in some areas we're even worse off, in terms of dumps,
than we were in 1968. In other areas we're doing better, but not
nearly as well as we ought to be doing.
Our studies of productivity show we're paying much too much
in most areas for solid waste services versus what we ought to be
paying for that level of service regardless of environmental
adequacy.
The Federal Government's program as currently conceived is
not well suited to deal with any of those problems. Let me elaborate.
First, in the absence of a standards enforcement program, we
have essentially followed what we might call a "carrot only" approach
in trying to get upgrading of land disposal sites. That is, we've
used publicity through projects like Mission 5000. We've used our plann-
ing grants and demonstration grants trying to essentially create a posi-
tive incentive to get communities to upgrade their disposal systems.
But the kind of torturously slow progress in meeting our
Mission 5000 goal is a good indication of the fact we're simply not
getting there this way. I'm not going to pin any blame for that,
but it's something we're very concerned about. It's not necessarily
a legislative issue but it's an issue which causes us very deep con-
cern. Why are we progressing so slowly in simply upgrading our land
disposal practices?
Second, the program that has been most successful in terms of
productivity is a technical assistance program of going into those
cities that really want to do something and enabling them to do
something. Yet, despite the fact that we have some very clear exam-
ples of what can be done for cities, like Cleveland or Huntington Woods,
for example, most cities for a variety of political, institutional,
management, and other reasons simply have very little incentive to try
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to upgrade the productivity of their systems. Again, there's very
little we can do about this particular problem.
Third, in the face of what we can see clearly as a problem—
insufficient demand in resource recovery (that is, a market problem
rather than a technology or supply problem)--there's very little
that the Federal Government can do to attack that problem. Wte do
have a demonstration program where we can try to show what technology
can do. Some of that technology may, in fact, lead to cost reductions.
In some cases it may lead to increased demand. But I think we would
say that that is not going to create a substantial market incentive
and, therefore, we're not really doing very much on the demand side
to try to turn the resource recovery situation around.
Finally, and perhaps most discouraging, EPA has not promised
to do anything about the hazardous waste problem, that is, the increas-
ing disposal of hazardous wastes on the land. And equally discouraging,
most States are not in a position currently to do anything about the
problem. It's true that Oregon and California are really launching
some pioneering efforts to try to lead the way in this area. The rest
of the States, to our knowledge, are just beginning to even notice,
as we are, that there is a substantial problem.
A year ago when I came into the program we viewed Section 212 of
the Resource Recovery Act,' the hazardous waste section, as essentially
an add-on to the bill and none of us took it very seriously. But today
as we see the effects of hazardous wastes on air and water pollution
control, as we begin to document some of the problems with what's
going on the land, we see that this may in fact be the most critical
landfill problem.
In short, then, I think that the Federal program has some serious
gaps in terms of what the problems are versus what we're able to do
about those problems. Now that doesn't mean the Federal Government
ought to be doing anything about any of those problems, but I think
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it does raise some issues at our level, and at the State level,
which you and we have to be facing over the next few months as
we begin to think about what kind of legislation is going to
replace the Resource Recovery Act.
Let me mention a couple of other issues which I think bear
directly on you (and there are many more issues that I'm not going
to go into).
Certainly most important from our point of view, is the
question of regulation enforcement. I think we would basically
say the following: As we begin to tighten up on air and water
pollution control, on pesticides, ocean dumping, and so forth, we
begin to leave a big gap in the regulatory area, that is in the
whole area of land disposal.
We're creating by our various actions, by the EPA's and the
States' various actions, a very substantial incentive to -misuse the
land as a disposal mechanism. And we have to begin to think what
kind of a regulatory program, if any, is warranted to take care of
that problem.
I think we would also say that our "carrot only" approach is
not going to get the job done. We look at what's happened in Mission
5000, we look at the results of our summer survey, we say it's time
to decide what's got to be done, if anything. And we do have very
clear evidence that the "carrot only" approach is not going to work.
Let me just bring up a few questions we have about regulation.
Which elements of the solid waste system, if any, should be regulated:
generation, storage, collection, processing, recovery, disposal?
Which industry should be regulated: industrial, municipal, agricul-
ture? Are we talking about solid wastes only, or solids, liquids,
and sludges? If some regulation is justified, who should do the regu-
lating—Federal, State, local jurisdictions, or combinations thereof?
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If States have the primary responsibility, is there any Federal role
in terms of preemption, or should there not be a Federal role? What
types of standards should be established: process, operating,
performance, emission, or others?
One question we're very much concerned about is the whole issue
of State non-importation laws. We're extremely concerned about States,
particularly in the east, that seem to be rushing to either pass, or
get legislation consideration for, non-importation laws. And we have
some serious questions about this particular aspect.
I want to make a couple of related points about these regulatory
questions I just raised. (These are my own personal opinions, I should
stress.) I think a very strong health and environmental case can be
made for the need to regulate hazardous wastes particularly at some
level. I'm not saying which one.
Second, I think there's a clear precedent in the environmental
area for State, not Federal, regulation if the States are going to do
it. If you look at the air and water areas I think you will see the
precedent is quite clear, and I would expect that any congressional
action in this area would look to that kind of precedent.
Third, in the hazardous waste area, the whole question of regu-
lation is very closely aligned with the question that was asked
us by the Congress in 1970; namely, what should we do about setting
up a national system of hazardous waste disposal sites. That's an
issue we're basically looking at separately.
Another question that concerns us greatly is that we think any
environmental regulation at any level ought to apply equally to
public and private bodies. In some States that simply isn't being
done now. There's a lot more political pressure not to move against
a city if the city itself operates dumps, but to us this is simply
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an unacceptable situation. Any regulation ought to apply equally
to everybody in the field.
Besides environmental regulation, a question we're not going
to discuss here but which is of interest in terms of the public-
private interplay, is what should the public agencies who contract
with the private bodies do about the whole question of economic
regulation of those private bodies?
While this question is unlikely to be a legislative issue per
se—there's no precedent for Federal action in this area—we feel
obligated to take a stand on it. I think the States in particular
should begin to examine this in some detail.
It's my belief that any regulatory program at any level—State,
local, or Federal—should have some kind of provision for citizen
suits. The reason for this is simple: A program is much easier to
regulate, in my opinion, if you have the additional uncertainty of
not knowing whether a citizen can come in and sue for inadequate
disposal practices. It creates an added incentive to get a poor
operation to upgrade its operation.
The second issue we're looking at that fully derives from the
first is the whole question of assistance to State programs. If
we look at what I've just said about problems, I think we would say
that from our perspective the highest priority State activities
ought to be: (1) a standards and enforcement program and (2) tech-
nical assistance related to that program and to the whole problem
of low productivity systems.
Let's now match that with what the Federal Government funds at
the State level, and that is basically planning. We have a very
strange situation at the present time where we see high priorities
in one area and yet by being able to fund only other areas, namely-
planning, we may lead States away from what we have identified as
the highest priority activities.
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So I think this is another question that has to be asked:
namely, what are the high priority State activities? Does the
Federal Government have a role in funding those State activities?
If so, there's a whole host of subsidiary questions that have to
be asked, obviously: What kind of flexibility should the States
have? Is there really a Federal role? These are questions I think
we're going to try to address over the next month or two.
Finally, and perhaps the trickiest question from our point of
view, is the issue of financial assistance to local governmental
jurisdictions. Clearly the thrust of what I have just said--tkat
is, calling for much stricter regulation at some level of hazardous
waste disposal as opposed to non-hazardous waste disposal — is going
to cause cities to have to pay more than they are currently paying
for at least hazardous waste disposal. Now many cities, we feel,
can offset part, or in some unique cases even all, of those costs
by increased efficiency on the collection side. But the fact is,
most cities would simply have to pay more for adequate disposal than
they're now currently paying.
That gives rise to a whole new series of questions: What is the
existing financial situation in solid waste management at the local
and regional levels? What's the likely impact of environmental
standards going to be on that situation? Is there a need for some
kind of a strategy or strategies embodied in Federal or State finan-
cial aasistance to those localities? And is that really a proper
role of either the States or the Federal Government?
Let me be brief and fairly blunt about how we see the existing
situation. The fact that most cities at the present time exhibit
very poor levels of performance leads us to believe there's a lot
of slack in the current financial base of most localities. The fact
that some cities are doing it well leads us to believe it's something
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that localities can finance on their own. However, we would say
that most cities are not going to do that by using their traditional
means of financing solid waste management systems.
For a public agency that is depending particularly upon general
obligation bonds and general revenue, we would say that there is a
whole host of other financing mechanisms: user charges, non-general
obligation bonds, bank financing, in a lot of cases leasing, calling
on private industry with its capital financing resources, and so
forth.
And of course, there are other alternatives which not only
provide substantially more financial capacity at a time when tax-
payers have clearly shown they are unwilling to pay higher general
tax bills but also, from our perspective, seem to be more efficient
kinds of financing mechanisms than general revenue and general
obligation bonds. Besides, the fact is you can get more money through
these other financing vehicles. We also think that they create a
substantially stronger incentive to be efficient.
In fact, we would go on to say one additional thing. We think
the single most important determinate of efficiency is the existence
of user charges. We think the user charges themselves create:
Cl) a very effective financing vehicle and (2~) a very, very strong
incentive to upgrade the productivity of an operation.
We realize there are problems with user charges, particularly
the question that's always asked of us, namely, what will be the
impact on the poor. But I would say, first of all, you're going to
have that problem with any kind of financing vehicle. It's much
easier to take into account how you're going to subsidize the poor,
if that's a local decision, through the user charge system than
through any of the other financing mechanisms. We would cite the
fact that some cities are facing the problem satisfactorily now with
the user charge system.
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All of this leads us to say that from our perspective, we don't
see a substantial Federal role in terms of financing local jurisdic-
tions no matter what the outcome of the other kinds of questions that
I address as being either appropriate or particularly necessary, in
the sense that we think a number of cities are doing it now.
We see very little reason to penalize Los Angeles, for instance,
that has an adequate disposal system, now self financed, to pay, for
instance, for New York City which doesn't have adequate disposal mecha-
nisms and would like Federal assistance. Why transfer those kinds of
funds? We just don't feel it's appropriate.
Any of the kinds of traditional Federal financing vehicles, par-
ticularly grant programs, are going to exacerbate the kinds of prob-
lems of productivity I talked about earlier. I realize this is not
going to be a very popular stance for many of you in this room, but
we feel it's a very, very necessary stance and one we're willing to
elaborate on at any length.
There are numerous other basic issues that I could have addressed
and didn't--the issue of resource recovery, resource reduction, and
others, but I have tried to highlight three of the issues that most
impinge on you in this room. The question of regulation, the question
of where we're going to go with our State assistance programs, if any-
where, and the question of financial assistance to local jurisdictions.
I would hope later on in this program we could elaborate on many
of these issues and more importantly I would counsel all of you,
because you have strong self-interest, to go back and think about
these issues yourselves, try to formulate institutional kinds of
positions, and let us know what those positions are. We're very, very
interested.
We're at a point in time where we can still change our minds and
we're all just beginning to formulate our opinions. In knowing your
opinions, we are willing to be influenced. We are not going to be
able to be influenced after July; now we are. I think that time is
very important, and I would very much solicit your views on this and
any other subject regarding the legislation.
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PANEL A
SELECTING SANITARY LANDFILL SITES
MODERATOR: John Talty*
*At time of conference. Director, Processing and Disposal Division,
Office of Solid Waste Management Programs, U.S. Environmental Pro-
tection Agency
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HOW TO SELECT AND ACQUIRE A SANITARY LANDFILL SITE
Peter Vardy
To start off, I'd like to make one thing perfectly clear, and
that should make me popular with the Administration today. There
is practically no site that I can think of that cannot be developed
with proper design and proper implementation techniques that would
adequately protect the environment. The question is, what are the
gives and takes, what are the trade-offs in doing this?
I'm a little concerned at times with becoming too hung up on
regulatory problems. We're not concerned enough about developing
good practices. If good practices are developed through information,
through the very kind of program we're having here today, I think the
burden on regulation will be considerably reduced.
As Mr. Dominick mentioned earlier, solid waste in particular
does not lend itself to political boundary solutions. I fail to see
in most cases the logic of relating solid waste management programs
to political boundaries. Perhaps on a State level they do make a lot
of sense, but not on a county or municipal level.
I think the sooner we learn the concept that regionalization is
the best solution to the disposal of solid wastes, the sooner we will
be able to implement some very effective economical and socially
acceptable programs.
The problem of solid wastes management in general and solid
waste disposal in particular has reached critical proportions during
the past decade.
Disposal problems are generally related to four basic areas of
concern: Technical and environmental problems, economic concepts,
social attitudes, and jurisdictional conflicts.
The urban sprawl that has developed since World War II has
created a serious refuse disposal problem both in terms of development
of what one expert calls "a scheme of operation" or a system of refuse
handling and processing prior to ultimate disposal. This increased
urbanization and the extensive development of rural areas have intensified
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the health and nuisance problems associated with open dumping and
burning. At the same time there has been a rapid decline in the
availability of suitable disposal sites.
The economics of collection, transfer, processing and hauling
to the disposal site have become so complex that computer analyses
of optimum systems are frequently required.
To add to the problem, past and current mismanagement of solid
waste disposal facilities has alienated the public, as evidenced by
the strong objectives raised by opponents of sanitary landfills at
just about every public hearing involving the establishment of a new
disposal site.
To successfully implement effective solid wastes management
programs, it is essential that public administrators, planners,
public works and health officials, as well as engineers, economics,
media representatives, and other elements of the private sector
be informed of both the problems of waste management and available
solutions.
The purpose of this meeting is to focus on one important aspect
of the waste management problem: namely, to present an overview of
efficient planning and implementation of sanitary landfill programs
specifically designed to serve urban, suburban, and rural areas.
In discussing the various factors which must be considered in
the selection of a sanitary landfill site, I have assumed that some
previous larger-scale planning has been completed which essentially
dictates the need for the sanitary landfill method of disposal
together with certain other volume reduction techniques such as
incineration, pyrolysis, composting, and chemical and biological
processing. Obviously, the need for disposal of certain wastes to
land remains no matter which supplementary processes are utilized.
However, such decisions must be made prior to the actual site selection
process.
The art, or "the science", if you will, of sanitary landfill site
selection has come a long way during the past few years. Where in the
past site selection was guided primarily by such factors as remoteness
from developed areas, availability of land, distance of land, and
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accessibility by collection and transfer vehicles, many new criteria
have been added to the basic selection process since then.
The order of priority in which the various parameters that I
will present to you this morning are considered and analyzed depends
on the solid waste management problems characteristics of each and
every local, regional, countywide or Statewide service area under
consideration.
I have attempted to present to you this morning some kind of
a simplified flow chart that will show what process you have to go
through to select a sanitary landfill site. I've played with this
idea for days and weeks and I've been unable to do so simply because
for each given area, geographic area as well as political, the priorities
that have to be considered in the selection of a landfill site are
different.
This does not mean, however, that you only consider those
parameters of site selection that you think apply to that one area.
You have to go through the process of evaluating all the parameters,
and those I will attempt to give you this morning. There may be some
I have omitted. There may be some that need more emphasis than others.
The main point is that there is more to site selection than drawing
circles, running computer programs on distances of land and finding the
ideal location in the center of that circle and then matching that or
tying it into the other problems which exist, namely, is the site
geologically acceptable, is it hydrogeologically acceptable, or is
there a minimum of public protest or opposition to that particular site.
The major factors to consider in the selection of a sanitary
landfill site basically fall into three areas: (1) technical/environ-
mental; (2) economic; and (3) socio-political.
The fact they're numbered does not mean that one is more important
than the other for a given area. Number 3 may be the overwhelming
factor for some, but for others the economic considerations are of
primary importance. The important thing is that you properly evaluate
all three and come to a decision of where you give and where you take.
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I will try and break down the technical/environmental considerations
into three basic areas: the waste material, the site, and the
environment with respect to the waste.
Remember please that we're talking about only site selection,
not about an overall waste management program. We're concerned with
the source of the material, where it's generated geographically. Is
it from residential, from commercial, from industrial sources, what
type of material is it? We're concerned with whether you're dealing
with any toxic or hazardous wastes, ordinary municipal wastes,
agricultural wastes, demolition materials, and so on.
And what kind of a handling system is available to us today
or what kind of a new system are we going to move into as a result
of some larger-scale plan such as a State waste management plan or
regional plan that has been developed into which we're trying to tie
the selection of the site.
So we are concerned with the source of the material, with the
quantities of waste generation, and hopefully we're going to be
dealing with quantities of weights and not volumes. Volume becomes a
very confusing thing to work with.
We're concerned about the characteristics of the material, what
kind of a site is needed for a particular type of waste, whether it's
the normal municipal waste or it's sludges, whether it's liquid waste,
toxic, hazardous materials, pesticide containers and so on.
What are some of the critical waste handling data we have to
have which come into play in the site selection process? What kind
of collection and transportation systems are available? Are there any
transfer stations? Are they existing or proposed? Is there any
processing of the waste being accomplished, such as milling, baling,
resource recovery?
These are all important with respect to the selection of the
particular site. For example, if milling or baling is used, you may
comtemplate using less cover material or perhaps no cover material, if we
can convince some people about this. This would have some influence
on whether a particular site that has less cover material available is
less feasible or can be considered or not.
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And of course we come to the normal approach, the distances
of so-called service areas to which the site must be sufficiently
close to make it economically feasible to service those areas for
disposal purposes.
Then we get to the site itself. In fact, usually we're talking
about a series of candidate sites, which are established in two ways.
One, existing sites that may need upgrading. You certainly want
to look at existing sites first, if for no other reason than that the
problem of public acceptance usually is far less serious on existing
sites than on new proposed sites. Secondly, you look at proposed sites
and how you arrive at those sites may be based on all of the criteria
that I'm presenting to you this morning.
If you're talking about toxic and hazardous materials, of
course, then the geology or the natural setting of the site beco.nes
the primary concern. If you're talking about municipal wastes, then
economics or the socio-political aspects may be more important.
At any rate, you nail it down to a number of candidate sites and
then you progress from there in applying these various parameters to
the sites.
In the evaluation of a specific site, we're looking at such
g_uestions as capacity, its physical characteristics, its location,
and the land use requirements which we may want to tie into with
that particular site.
The next things to consider, of course, are such questions as
topography, accessibility, and climate. Do you have high, average,
or low rainfall? Is it an arid or humid climate? What are the
geologic features of the site? This is particularly important.
Probably one of the key questions that determines the economics
of developing the site for a sanitary landfill is whether sufficiently
impervious soils are available below and around the site. If they are,
this is a great plus. If you are directly on top of rock it's a
problem because of the fractures and the jointing in the rock. They have
a tendency to transmit leachate and gases away from the site. What is
the drainage of the area? Is the development of the site going -o improve
or create problems as far as drainage is concerned?
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Other factors must also be considered. What are the hydrogeologic
features, what is the ground-water table, what is the historic high of
the ground-water table as achieved in the past in that particular area?
Is cover material available or are there other sources of material
available for site improvement as far as construction of levees, access
roads, and various other improvements that are required for the
development of the sites?
Incidentally, with respect to cover material, I'm quite
often perturbed at the tendency to specify what cover material
is good cover material, leaving you with the impression that if
you don't have, for example, sandy loam available that it's just
not a very good site. As it turns out, you use what you have. And
usually what you have will do the job, provided you use it properly.
You can have fat and expansive clays which tend to crack, but you can
properly protect it depending on what the end uses of it are for that
site.
You can be terribly lucky and have sandy loam or a clay silty
sand, if you will. I'm not so sure whether that's always the
ideal situation, but in certain places, it does the job very well.
In other places you can have just clean sand and that, too, may be
acceptable depending on what the ultimate uses for the site are.
What are the natural resources you may be dealing with? Are
you dealing with a sand and gravel pit which may be still active, with a
strip mine? The question of utilizing areas of natural resources
recovery are very important to consider in the selection of a site.
What are the long-term use needs? What is the land to be
developed for: open space, recreational, agricultural, flood control
purposes, or for residential, commercial, or industrial development?
These all have a very serious bearing on the selection of a site.
And then, of course, you want to look at existing sites and
see what it will take to first evaluate the site, whether it's
performing adequately, and what it will take to upgrade it to meet
proper sanitary landfill requirements.
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The environment, of course, is something that we're getting
into more and more, and chances are that from now on there's going
to have to be an environmental impact study prepared for each
particular site. There are several criteria that have been developed
for that purpose. You could use the EPA guidelines, which I think
are excellent, with respect to sanitary landfill environmental impact
studies.
There are other guidelines, the USGS guidelines, but at any
rate, you will consider the physical and chemical aspects and the
ecological, aesthetic, and health and safety factors.
With regard to economic considerations, of course, there are
many variables: The distance and method of haul, cost and method
of land acquisition (purchase, eminent domain, or leasing), cost of
site preparation, landfill operations in terms of manpower, and
equipment and installation of environmental control systems. The
last is something we have to think about now on every site. It may
not be necessary on every site but we may have to install it and
we have to evaluate the cost of it. Also involved are the cost of
actual long-term monitoring and reading of the surveillance data,
cost of final improvements to meet the end-use requirements, and cost
of post-landfilling maintenance. This is something most people tend
to forget, but it's an extremely important thing and you have to
budget a considerable amount of money for this post-construction period.
Then you have the question of trade-offs. What are the total
capital and operating costs versus the end use benefits? It it
worth spending more money on engineering for site development in order
to get the benefits that will accrue in the end as the result of
developing land, for example, in a highly organized area, which will
serve as very useful purpose?
Financing alternatives, of course, are many. Sandy Hale alluded
to many of these both in the area of planning, capital improvements, and
operating costs. There are things available such as EPA planning grants,
hopefully the HUD 701 program, the 704 program, and the Open Space Land
Program, and the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation program.
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The Mountain View Shoreline Regional Park, which was developed
south of San Francisco, receives the refuse from the City of San
Francisco and is a 550-acre site reclaimed from marshlands near
San Francisco Bay.
The way it was financed is a rather interesting procedure.
The cost of development of the land acquisition was 2.4 million
dollars, and this was financed by a combination of State, Federal,
and local sources.
The Bureau of Outdoor Recreation, through the State of
California Department of Parks and Recreation, made available
1.2 million dollars to the City of Mountain View. In addition,
$600,000 was obtained from the Santa Clara County Department of
Parks and Recreation, and the City provided $600,000 from the Parks
and Recreation Bond Fund supplemented with sales tax revenues. The
City then formed a special district which encompasses this park;
it is made up of the same Board members as the City Council.
Through special state legislation they were able to issue
new bonds and become a taxing authority, in effect, to finance
park improvements. One of the first acts of this new district was
to sell revenue bonds to pay back the sales tax bonds advanced by
the City.
Disposal fees will pay most of the costs of filling the park
to designed grades, and the present plans are to finance park
improvements such as the golf course, structures, restaurants, sail
boat lake, and so forth, by future revenue bond issues paid for by
concession lease fees to the site.
As you can see, many of these systems can be incorporated into
one particular site.
Socio-political factors all require careful consideration:
existing legislation and laws, existing plans, how they tie together,
what the political climate is, what kind of public relations and
information programs are necessary to achieve acceptance, what are
the land use and zoning controls, and finally what are the community
interests and individual interests in the area. These are things
which certainly bear consideration and analysis.
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EFFECTS OF INDUSTRIAL AND HAZARDOUS WASTES ON SITE LOCATION
Donald Andres*
When we talk about hazardous wastes, there is a solids
category consisting of off-grade, out-dated products or items
that have been contaminated. We have thrown away a couple of
truck beds, for instance, where a load broke. That happens to
be a solid waste that a liquid got into. We have a lot of spent
liquids, caustics/ acids, and solvents that are discarded. We
have slurries. Many of these contain heavy metals or organic
chemicals that are toxic. And we have what we call sludges which
could be the bottom out of ponds, tank bottoms, and this pond bottom
may be more important with some of the environmental legislation that's
taken place.
There is no one solution with regard to locating a site for
disposal, because it depends on the type of waste you're handling and
it depends on how you're going to handle it.
The geological conditions are very important. You need a very
detailed geologic investigation. Obviously you can have no seepage to
ground water or surface waters but you have to also be concerned about
seepages to adjacent properties. Someone working in an excavation
adjoining a disposal site might run into something he is ill prepared
to cope with.
You also need to have more stability of slopes and embankments.
A sudden failure of a pond, a dike, or a landslide in general would
be a lot more catastrophic than some of our more routine wastes. The
native soils might have to be modified through chemical liners or
addition of more fine or expansive soils.
Drainage control is very important. Our water supply people have
cautioned us that if you have these kinds of things and you have a
public water supply you need cross-connection controls.
Many of you have heard about the classification system that our
State Water Quality Control Board uses. Wastes are classified in Groups
*Senior Sanitary Engineer, California State Department of Public Health
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1, 2, and 3. Three is inert, generally non-decomposable material,
such as clay, concrete, etc.
Class 1 comprises the very hazardous materials. But what's
hazardous to water quality may not be hazardous to you and me. And
this is where the classification system from the Water Board falls
a little short. That's why we have entered the field with other
guidelines.
For instance, in the southwestern part of the United States
we're very concerned with ground waters and the increasing
mineralization of these water sources. So a Class 1 waste is
water-softening brine and you and I swim in it. It's called the
Pacific Ocean. It doesn't hurt us but we don't like to drink that
stuff. So in a strict water quality classification that does not
cover everything.
Class 2 is everything that falls in the middle.
Then we turn around and classify disposal cites. A Class 3
disposal site provides little or no protection to water quality.
You're dumping in the water. If you can dump in ground water, in surface
water, you'd be worried about floatables or sedimentation and this would
have to be controlled.
A Class 1 site overlies areas where there is no ground water
or isolated body of unusable ground water. In California we have
only 11 Class 1 sites. Many of them overlie marine sediments. I'm
not sure what the people in the Midwest are goirg to do. You cannot
adopt this verbatim, but this technique of looking at the geology,
and we look at it mainly from a water quality point of view, governs
most of our site selection.
Air quality regulations also influence our methods. Up to a
little while ago, we used to dispose of a lot of things through
evaporation, but now somewhere between a third and half of our State
has restrictions on the amount of solvents that can be disposed of
through evaporation, a gallon and a half per person per day. You'd
have to paint your house very slowly in order not to violate air
pollution regulations.
I'm very concerned about the trends of the future. As a person
who makes his living in solid wastes, I'm very pleased to see them
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because our problems are going to get bigger as time goes on.
We're seeing tighter and tighter controls in those areas
where people are concerned with water and air quality. I was
very pleased to hear Sandy speak in favor of land control, but I
was kind of distressed to hear EPA being proud of its ocean disposal
policy. Maybe Mr. Dominick is a member of the Pisces group. I
happen to be terrestrial and prefer to keep my habitat, the land,
safe enough for me to walk on and drink the water underneath it. And
I would prefer to get a few more of these minerals back out there and
let the creatures that live in the briny deep keep them.
We have not had enough concern about land use. Concerning
the air regulations, we first attacked incinerators and we got rid
of the bad practice of burning solvents. Because the material left
in the solvents left black fumes coming up, we refined them down and
we still have this gunk left. And to burn it we've got to take all
the gunk out and if we could do it, you could reclaim the solvent.
You get down to the point of diminishing returns. This is terrible
stuff to handle. You don't want this mixed with refuse. Unless you
want a big volume reduction in your site through a fire, you just don't
put it around refuse.
But now we can no longer evaporate it. We've got paint
manufacturers who seem to be putting more in drums to store,
looking for a place to go with it, than they are shipping out
their front door as a product right now. Maybe we'll import our
paints from another State.
The other thing that concerns me is the new water policy of
allowing little or no discharges to the surface streams. This
means we put the stuff on land. If you're overlying some of our
ground water basins where the mineralization is increasing, you're
not going to be allowed to percolate this into the ground water.
So you may evaporate it and when you get all done, you've got
all the salts and brine left in the bottom of the pond. We're doing
this more and more as we're withdrawing stuff out of the sewers.
Particularly since the Federal law now requires that industry pay its
fair share of the sewage treatment process.
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They're yanking stuff out of the sewers and evaporating it or
taking it back to land. This stuff is not particularly toxic. It may
be if it has some heavy metals in it, for instance, but there will be
an increasingly large amount of materials that cannot be put on the
ground just anywhere, and they will be hazardous to people and water
quality and to the broader environmental aspects.
I have no detailed answers for you today, but I see this problem
growing, and there may have to be a little bit more pre-treatment
at industrial sites. This is fine if you've in a major complex.
Maybe there'll be some caution. But if you have a hazardous waste
disposal site, you better have something better than social security.
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QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION
Samuel Johnson: We have some hazardous wastes sites in
Kentucky including an atomic waste site. We're running into a
problem on sites that are not permitted to take hazardous wastes
but are allowed to take some, and it's really throwing the devil
into our budget. We found that yearly monitoring a site you allow
hazardous wastes to go in, even in small quantities, is running around
$500 to $1,000 a site just in lab costs.
So if you're going to allow hazardous wastes to go into a site
and you also have this allowance in your law, where any person can
bring a site into court, they'll go out there and pick up these pesticide
cans and all this other stuff and you've got to go to court and prove
that it's not causing damage to the ground water or to the surface
water.
And it's costly to prove it. The last one we had just a week
ago for one site was $500 for one shot, just on the lab costs alone.
So you're getting into a field where we're going to need a lot of
money and help to go into it.
Bryan Miller: I have a. question for Mr. Andres. On your
classification of hazardous wastes you included hospital wastes.
Can you tell me why they are so classified and what organisms you
find in them that aren't found in normal residential waste?
Donald Andres: We found more in the way of "people" organisms.
I happen to be a civil engineer and you're going way over my head. Some
of our medical people can give you a list of names that I can't read.
They talk about the contagious elements that may be there.
Basically, what we're concerned with is we're asking each
hospital and infectious committee to determine what portion of the
hospital has isolation wards, any area where the doctors must go in
and gown up and mask in and out for what they consider a communicable
problem, then we're concerned. Once such wastes are buried in a landfill,
we lose a great deal of our interest.
But we find situations where the wastes are left exposed. We have
had some situations where children have gotten in less than sanitary
landfill site operations and have brought the material out. Its the
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handling aspects more in medical waste.
If you'll permit me, I have outlined some of the definitions
we're using in hazardous wastes. They are toxic or poisonous,
corrosive irritants, strong sensitizers, flammable, explosive, or
infectious. And then we go on to define those further in specific
State codes. The bulk of the hospital wastes is not hazardous.
Bryan Miller: The point is, its in the normal population,
in the doctor's office or in the household. Why should it be
considered hazardous simply because it came from a hospital?
Donald Andres: We're also talking about medical offices, in
some cases. The hazard may not be totally infectious, however, this
is mainly what we're concerned with.
It's the concentration in one area. And when a dozer goes
into a pile of that stuff, the aerosol coming off of it may be a
concern and it may be a concern in the loading of the stuff into
the truck from the medical facility.
D. D. Freeman: Mr. Vardy spole on the subject of certain types
of landfill cover being acceptable only for certain site preparations,
sandy loam, clay, et cetera. What categories would these fit into?
Sandy loam, for instance, for parks and building sites? Can you
elaborate on that?
Peter Vardy: You see, the question of what type of covering
depends on what you're trying to accomplish with a cover. Now, if
your main purpose is to protect the sanitary landfill from
infiltration of surface waters, then of course you should confine
yourself to the more impervious type materials. The more impervious
these materials become, the more tendency there is for them to
crack as they dry. In other words, the clay content will be higher.
Now they say they want to discourage that because then the gases
escape and create a problem, or you're creating cracks where more
water can go in.
So it depends on what you're really trying to accomplish with
a cover. If, for example, you want to develop a golf course and the
material that's available to you for general cover is a clay material,
which may have a tendency to crack, we overcome that by a certain type
of finishing of the site.
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In other words, you can put on the top soil material which
would be required anyway for planting purposes. You may have a sand
blanket over the clay and the general irrigation procedure would
keep the claycover from drying up.
There's a feeling, for example, if you go to the more pervious
covers that this would tend to dissipate the gases that are generated
and the gas pressures won't build up underneath the cover. Well, you
can overcome that by venting systems. You don't have to have the gas
coming through the cover.
The point is, for any given type of cover material, you have
to give some thought to what you're trying to have it accomplish.
You design accordingly, based on the uses for the site.
It is very, very difficult to say this kind of cover material
will do the job and another one won't. This is a flexible thing and
all you can do is to determine what is available how you should design
the site to accommodate that particular material.
Larry Kramer: I was wondering about the special handling problems
with these hazardous materials. Is there any special procedure to
segregate these hazardous materials at the disposal site?
Donald Andres: You don't want to do very much at the disposal
site. It's already too late.
We now have in our State a licensing procedure for the hauling
of liquid wastes. Because of the problems that have developed in
that area, we have in our legislature at this time a bill which
would require greater invoicing or manifesting on any material
that is deemed hazardous.
The State would make such a list. We already have listed
well over a thousand materials. The Occupational Safety and Health
Association has a list of 11,000.
We're wondering if we should scrap this legislation at the
last minute and go the way the United Kingdom has done, that is,
listing what's safe. If it is not on the safe list, you must
have a permit to dispose of it. It's identified by the source of
the material or the producer of the waste identifies it.
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To simplify paper work, on any sort of routine reoccurring wastes,
the United Kingdom issues permits a year at a time for its disposal,
so one doesn't have to be on the phone every day calling a regulatory
agency to dispose of it.
John Talty: Don, are your Class 1 sites pretty well distributed
in the state, that is, geographically?
Donald Andres: No, not at all. This is one of our major
problems. Fortunately the sites are in our most industrialized
areas, but we've had considerable problems in our rural areas with
such things as pesticides and where to go with them.
Some of our haul distances approach two or three hundred miles
to a legal disposal site. And I see very little of this stuff
being hauled down the highways. But I don't go asking too many
questions, either, because I have no solution.
Mr. William McNulty. What I've done, that might simplify it
for some of you, I demand that the generator of the waste give me the
chemical analysis. Until a year ago, when the Department of Health
split up into the EPA and the Department of Health, I used to call the
Department of Health and tell them what had been submitted to me and
asked them whether or not I should handle it. I put all the responsibility
on the generator of the waste. If they sent me a lye or something, it
would seem to me that they would have trouble.
Donald Andres: Addressing myself to that and a previous question,
abaut the only segregation or testing that's done on site generally
is using an explosive meter as a quick check for an immediate reaction.
Our Class 1 site operators know their clientel and they kick out anybody
who is not honest about what comes in.
Several of them have chemical engineers working for them, on a
retainer, and they do segregate materials. Some containers are emptied,
some containers are buried without opening them up, some are incorporated
as refuse, and some are just given a grave in the soil several feet deep.
And hopefully that area will be monumented and nobody will ever come back
to punch holes in it.
I make light of some of the things that are happening, only to keep
my sanity, because when you see some of this stuff going around, if I
took it as seriously, as I guess I should, I wouldn't sleep nights.
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Henry Warren: Several of the previous speakers, including Mr. Vardy
have spoken strongly of the joys and benefits of regionalization in
solid waste handling.
I come from a State where there are 495 towns, the average size
of which is less than 2,000 population, and in most cases less than
a thousand. The average geographic size is about 40 square miles.
We're just beginning to get into the solid waste problem. I
guess my question is: Does your experience indicate that the joys
of regionalization can be passed on to a low population, high-distance
situation of this kind?
Peter Vardy: The matter of regionalization really boils down
to the fact that when you talk about solid wastes, what creates the
region is to some extent political. But to a major extent, in
terms of site selection, it has to do with certain geographic, topographic,
climate, transport, and economic situations which bear very little
relationship to political boundaries.
The other problem that involves regionalization is that the makeup
of the body which is responsible for selection of sites is generally
such that it cannot possibly do a good job in site selection, because
it consists generally of representatives of single-purpose agencies.
You have either the influence of engineering or influence of public
works on that body. You don't have a well balanced group in the
selection process, and this is essential. And it's essential that
it be made up not just at the local level but of the entire region
for which you're looking for solid waste disposal.
I would really like to see these bodies made up of representatives,
for example, from the public sector, works, engineering, health, and
finance departments, as well as elected public officials. They tend
to be more responsive to some of the social attitudes and the problems
concerning the site selection.
They could be assisted by an Advisory Committee from the public
at large. I think it's essential to involve the public in the very
early stages of site selection so you don't run into all these problems,
people appearing at public hearings and tearing your whole project
down.
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This regional concept, I think, is the best solution to the
selection and the establishment of properly located and designed
landfill sites. This is what we mean by regionalization.
Now, the role of the State, of course, must remain in a
controlled regulatory and advisory capacity with assistance both
technical and financial, wherever possible.
The local or the regional body must have the final say in the
site selection itself. Of course, you cannot be so rigid in this
process that any changes in the development or a particular community
cannot change the overall plan.
I am sometimes appalled when reading some State or county reports
or waste management studies that have been prepared, which really do
nothing more than establish or try to establish the authority of the
body for which they prepare their report. If it's prepared for the
State, it makes a good case for the State getting very heavily into the
regulatory area in the sanitary landfill selection and operation.
If it's prepared for counties, they make a very excellent case as to why
the county is the proper body control.
My point is that the makeup of the body that controls this
process should be a cooperative effort between a local community,
the county, depending on whether it's a rural area or urban area,
whether it's a special district or metro district. There are many,
many other ways of approaching it.
We should start looking at it in the same way we are lookingat
sewer utility districts, the way we look at rapid transit districts,
where various governmental bodies learn to cooperate and work together.
This, apparently, we have not achieved in the solid waste area
William Harrington: I think they're in opposition right now to
this idea from the standpoint of regionalization. In the first place,
the small towns we hear about have such small quantities that the
proper sanitary landfill practices are going to be very costly. We're
in a position where the realization is they can combine some of these within
the economic long haul cost distances and so be a viable system which can
be expanded throughout the life of the State. And they're way ahead of us
if they go that route now.
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In other areas we just plain can't fund this open area that can
be properly located to get the benefit of the haul cost. It seems
to me that regionalization is the ideal way to go when you're still
in the spread out development counties.
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DESIGNING A RURAL SANITARY LANDFILL SYSTEM
Fred Cope*
Synopsis
With the assistance of a grant from the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency, Humboldt County, California is conducting a
project intended to demonstrate and evaluate a collection and disposal
system for about 10,000 residents in small, rural areas of the southern
part of the county.
The study area has been divided in halves, and a series of
easily accessible containers has been installed in each for use
by the public. In one subarea, waste is deposited in 40 cubic-yard
roll-off-type containers that can be picked up and hauled to a
central sanitary landfill. In the other subarea, the contents of
8 cubic-yard containers are emptied into a 30 cubic-yard collection
vehicle that proceeds to the sanitary landfill when full.
This presentation involved the use of slides showing a map of
the area, the containers and modifications thereto, and facilities
and topography at the sanitary landfill.
*Department of Public Works, Humboldt County, Eureka, California
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QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION
Thomas Cavanagh: You indicated there were scales at your
site. Is this a unique situation or are scales generally required
throughout the State of California?
Fred Cope: It's unique. The EPA told us to have scales.
This is the only site where we have scales, but is is very helpfu].
We purchased the scales used, and including the placement and everything,
the cost was about $6,000. And if I have my way at our other sites,
which will be larger than this one, we'll try to get some form of
scales where we can monitor the type and quantities of the waste
we're getting.
Right now we're running the system, but we are going to evaluate
whether we want to turn it over to a franchise operation. And I
think the key thing is how much money are they going to receive. So scales
are important.
Don McClenahan: In that same line, I'd like to ask Mr. Andres
if he feels that it's necessary for the State to require that the
scales be on every disposal site.
Donald Andres: No, I don't think they need to be at every site.
I don't think Fred mentioned that he's getting an average of about
10 tons a day. Sometimes he goes all the way up to 12 tons a day
at that site. And adding th;.t scale was really on a per-ton
basis and increased its cost.
Some of our major counties do not use scales when they are
operating without a service charge, but as a method of control they
take aerial photographs and take volumes into consideration.
Occasionally, they spot-check loads by running selected loads across
scales. Sometimes the highway patrol does it for them, and they
get a better idea of volumes that come in per truck.
Those people who are on a charge basis at very big sites find
the scales are necessary as a billing mechanism. It does very little
about projecting the site life. They are more interested in the volume.
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Some of our cities now use scales just to keep better
control on their collection system. Mr. Kaufman is here from the
City of San Diego. He runs his own sites and brings his own trucks
in and he doesn't charge anybody, but he does have an idea what
the refuse collectors are doing on the route. He weighs the trucks
in each day and he uses the scale as a means of improved collection
efficiency.
Don McClenahan: There's no question that scales do offer
advantages. My question was, do you feel from a State control stand-
point that scales are necessary?
Donald Andres: No; we require that the sites report to us their
quantities. We don't care if they arrive at it through weight and we
translate that into a volume, or if they do it on a volume basis. We
can go back and make comparisons.
What we want is quantity, and I don't care if they weigh it
in the truck or if they fly over the site occasionally.
John Talty: For your information, there is an interesting debate
going on in the State of Illinois about requiring scales at disposal sites.
That's sort of the background for some of these questions.
Mr. Albert Wietz: What do your rural residents do with bulk
items at your local pickup station?
Fred Cope: The majority of the bulk items are handled within
the system and that's one of the disadvantages of the 8-yard system
that we are concerned with. But the 8-yard system does have the
advantage that we can run through several specific sites and back to
the landfill with one trip. We want to cut the costs down.
If any large demolition work is done in any of these rural areas,
we're going to direct them to take the waste to the central site. And I
think we'll get a little bit of reaction there. That's one of the reasons
why we, in our county, with its size, will probably end up with about
four central small landfills.
Kenneth Lustig: I was wondering about the transfer boxes, those
40-yard boxes, do you have a leak problem, do you have a load problem?
We have to use a lot of firest roads. We have a load limit on the forest
service roads.
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Fred Cope: Within Humboldt County we do have forestry service
roads, but it seems like every time there are any private landowners
along this road they think we will tear up the roads. So we have something
like 1300 miles of road. We've only got four major State routes and the rest
are county roads. On the forestry roads there isn't enough population
there to warrant putting anything out there, so we're on county roads.
We are within legal weight limits, though.
Kenneth Lustig: How about load problems?
Fred Cope: In the 8-yard box there is a problem. Its metal to
metal and there is a problem but the 40-yard box is water-tight.
Dennis Hawker: Unfortunately, you didn't talk about costs. But
I'm interested in whether or not your county could have initiated such
a system without having Federal assistance to obtain capital investment
of money needed.
Fred Cope: Let me back up a little bit. I think when you look
at a Federal grant you look at it with the idea of what can the local
agency get out of it. I think it's a realistic approach that everybody
takes when they look at one of these programs.
I've reoriented myself quite a bit. Our business manager says,
"What you think you're going to pay, double it." Because that's what
the local agency ends up paying. I think that's probably true. I
think when you go in and look at one of these things you have to be
very careful how you look at it.
If we were going it alone, I think we could have developed a
system, you know, with assumptions. We could have had it operational
and workable with the money we've put in this project, but we would not
have had the background knowledge that will be of benefit to us when
we expand because we have already noted certain problems about the
system. But although we could have something operational, it would
have had many faults in it. I think we can justify our expenditures
and we will expand.
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Dennis Hawker: Would you have had the capital available to
initiate the system?
Fred Cope: Yes. Like I say, one-third of our share on the
demonstration project, the regular dumps programs, was running
something like 60,000 a year, and then we added in for this project
something like — alone, our share was $100,000 just for land
acquisition. So we put quite a bit into it.
Walter Erlenbach: We have a rural problem similar to
yours. I wondered about utilization. How many of these 100,000
people take their refuse to these places and what sanctions are you
going to put against those who don't? We find it very dffficult to
get people to quit using their own little landfill out in back of
the hill. I'm sure you have this problem. What are you doing about it?
Fred Cope: We initially had 27 dump sites, and we're upgrading
four key ones. The Bimbo is what we consider the central or key site.
The county has control over our franchise collectors so we
dictate which site or disposal site they can use. We have eliminated
all privately operated dumps. There are a few that we call illegal sites
in real remote areas, which we have not to date recognized as waste
disposal sites.
One of the phases we're going through is a countywide ordinance.
The only major stumbling block we have is with one incorporated city
that has a form of refuse disposal. It's the only city within the
county that has this.
So in a sense, we can write an ordinance and put it into effect
and control it. If a private individual, for example, wanted to run
his own disposal site, the Health Department could tell him to either
bring it up to compliance or close it down.
Walter Erlenbach: You will have that form of sanction, though?
Fred Cope: Yes, I'm sure we'll have to have it in order to control it.
Ronald Nickel: We've been providing this service since mid-1968
in suburbs west of Milwaukee and are having the same problems with these
small dumps, burning dump sites being closed down, not being able to afford
the cost of a new sanitary landfill.
If you figure up the hidden costs in these new areas, primarily
the fire cost, because they would have to contract with the city to get
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fire protection, we find with these towns that it really costs
no more, generally speaking. We've got some eight or nine townships
and little villages using this service.
Also, another thing we found that's been a great help in
answer to an earlier question, is how to get people to quit using
the little dump that they're accustomed to. You've got to transform
them into new ways of thinking, seven days a week, 24 hours a day.
We have encouraged townships to install containers at perhaps
their city garage, so people all of a sudden leave the old behind and
think of it as something new. It has worked out pretty well, getting
the people acclimated to certain ways, certain hours. It's been
very successful in the last three or four years.
Kenneth Lustig: We did the same thing. We put in across from
a grocery store or gas stations and we got good compliance. However,
in Idaho we've got problems with the tourist trade. We've got one area
that goes from 500 residents up to 1500 in the summer. We don't have
a tax base to support that kind of volume. We get camper trailers
where people literally move in on wheels.
Do you have that problem and, if so, how do you solve it?
Fred Cope: We do have tourism, and part of our project is to
evaluate how we're going to operate in the future.
Any fees collected at this time are turned back to the government
so we thought, since we have a consultant evaluating how to fund this
project, we're better off not charging. Eventually we may. But when
we get to the rural sites I doubt if we will; in fact, I will almost
say we won't, because the cost of collecting these user fees ig
going to far exceed the cost of personnel.
A tourist usually represents some form of income to somebody
and this is what our consultant is supposed to be doing for us. Hope-
fully he will.
Donald Andres: I'd like to comment a little bit further on
the Humboldt project.
It's a misconception to think of Humboldt County as 100,000 people.
Fred showed that possibly the southern one-third of the county has a
population of 10,000 people and the majority of those live in that
cooridor area in which there is no container service. What we're doing
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is promoting refuse collection in that area because a collector
already exists, and it's economical to have him there.
Most of the tourism takes place in this area where the resorts
contract for extra service during the summer. We have many of the
large State redwood forests in this area.
The other thing about financing, where you have these population
surges, one of the phrases that has come out of the project is called
"the shotgun approach". You only take a little bit off the general
property tax, because this is a benefit countywide in the system.
We're talking about a recreational tax , maybe a bed tax in the area to
help get the transients and then you can start to hit property owners.
One of the fees I strongly endorse is a hook-up fee. When anybody
hooks up to a sanitary sewer in the district you generally pay some kind
of a connection charge. I strongly advocate that our counties have
a solid waste connection charge. Instead of calling it that, you may
add a factor onto the building permit. Every time you enlarge a
building you pay more, or if you construct something where you generate
solid wastes through land usage, you pay for it as a fee to help buy
into the fixed system.
The other thing is that legislation just passed in California
allows us to assess solid waste charges to the property owner, not
based on the value of the property, a general ad valorem tax, but we
can assign fees to the property based on its land usage.
The resultant amount of solid wastes we expect to get from that
land usage closely resembles the property tax and it can be billed
in that fashion. This way we can get the absentee owner to pay for
having the system there when he comes in and if its strictly recreational
property we will assign a different fee than if it's a year-round
occupied property.
So by the "shotgun approach" we hope to get all the people who
are benefiting.
Bryan Miller: Do you think it would be economically feasible to
operate a system like you described in a county 75 miles wide and 94
miles long with a population of 2,000 people, less than one per mile?
Incidentally, this particular county is 80 percent Federal land,
leaving 20 percent of a taxable base.
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Fred Cope: Our county is about 30 miles wide and about a
hundred or so miles long. So we've got a 4500 square-mile area.
And as Don mentioned and I mentioned earlier, about 60,000 of
this is within the central core area. And about 70 percent of
Humboldt County is State or Federally owned.
When we look at these container sites I don't really like to
look at them totally from the standpoint of cost per ton, because when you
say twenty or whatever dollars per ton, you say, "That's outrageous".
But it would be more for an alternate system and when someone moves out in
that area you do have a waste problem. And we really have not resolved
in our own minds how we're gong to handle it as far as financing.
If you've got a rual area and they got a waste problem, you're
going to have to come up with some type of system, even if it's to try
to encourage them to drive clear from there they live into the central
site.
But we also recognize if we do that that we're going to have moee
open dumps out there. So we have to compromise. What's economical is,
I guess, whatever, you can get out there and pay for.
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PANEL B
SANITARY LANDFILL ENGINEERING AND CONSTRUCTION
MODERATOR: John Vanderveld
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LAYOUT AND ENGINEERING OF SANITARY LANDFILL SITES
William Harrington*
Obviously, with a subject such as this, you can only get
a brief overall view of it in 15 minutes. And in spite of what
some of you who know me might think, I will not admit to only
knowing 15 minutes worth of information.
The basic difference in a sanitary landfill and the
anachronistic open dump is the detailed engineering required in
its planning. This engineering, primarily, is a combination of
practices historically used in conducting clean earth fills
plus some of the practices that have come about in recent years.
As we give thought to how to construct a sanitary landfill
and some of the things that are involved, we think of current
research, site monitoring, and recently enacted regulations. All
of these things must be accommodated by the landfill design.
For the purposes of this discussion, we will accept the fact
that we've already determined the waste quantities and types, and
the site has been located. That in itself requires a considerable
amount of engineering effort, but certainly is beyond the scope
of this effort.
The engineering task remaining can usually be broken down
into four distinct stages, and we do this in an effort to save
the client dollars. The four stages are the preliminary site
engineering, the final landfill development procedures, the
final facilities design, and then field engineering.
Once the site has been selected, the primary effort must
go to the subsurface investigation. Care should be used during
this preliminary stage to expend only those engineering dollars
that are required to prove site acceptability. You can go the
long route if you wish, but you risk losing all of the money
you've spent until you know this for a fact.
*Associate Engineer, Whitman Requardt S Associates, Baltimore,
Maryland
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The primary task is the subsurface investigation to determine
the site geology and groundwater levels. We need this information
for a variety of reasons. The groundwater level will help us
establish the limit of the depth of excavation for the base of
the fill. The geology certainly is important to us to try to
determine the underlying earth strata. The same data allows
us to determine the quantities and types of cover material we
have available to uc.
No other engineering expenditure can be justified until
this part of the project is pretty well underway, because the
use of the site itself is almost totally dependent on this
first effort.
Now, as the subsurface investigation is proceeding, it's a
good idea to have representatives of the regulatory agencies
at least monitor that part of the drilling operation so they're
totally aware o± the conditions that exist in the field. It's
been our experience that they are anxious to do this and are
very cooperative.
Upon completion of the subsurface investigation there should
be a formal request from the regulatory agency to provide con-
ditional acceptance or approval of the site. This acceptance
or approval should be in writing, and it should be or is usually
written with the condition that it is approved pending develop-
ment of proper operating procedures for the protection of the
environment and things of that nature. Such action on the part
of the regulatory agency, of course, can save much heartache
and prevent you from spending dollars which you cannot justify
until you have it. In almost all instances we have been for-
tunate enough to get this kind of cooperation.
After the conditional approval is obtained, then you can
start evaluating the site again preliminarily from the standpoint
of such factors as its drainage diversion potential, fill volume,
operational screening, and access. Each of these items should
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be developed only to the extent required to show the designer
that they can be successfully accommodated in his final design.
At the same time you should develop them to the point where
you can determine or estimate the basic cost for developing
the site, because this has considerable bearing on the value of
the site to the potential operator.
At this point in time, you should consider purchasing an
option to buy the property. Certainly with a private individual
this should be conditional upon obtaining a permit to operate
in order that he does not lose the cost of his option. For a
public agency developer, negotiations for purchase or, as is
more frequently the case, condemnation proceedings can begir. at
this time.
Now that's basically the preliminary phase. Step 1 doesn't
cost a lot of dollars, but it gives you firm background on which
to go to Step 2, which is the final development plan.
Once the site ownership is assured, the final operating
plan development can begin. Frequently, at this point you will
need additional soil borings and, if the geology is irregular
as it is in many areas of the country, these additional borings
can be significant in number and cost. The borings, of course,
will further define the groundwater table, the limits of exca-
vation, and availability of cover material.
At the same time, you can begin the development of the
final off-site drainage diversion plans and the final site use.
A public agency developer will normally allocate the completed
landfill to recreational use as the ultimate site use. This
is a good selling point to the community. Everybody likes open
space, playgrounds, and recreational facilities, so the public
agency does this frequently.
As you're developing the final grading plan you should do
it as a cooperative effort with the final user. If it's
recreational, with the recreational planner. You have to be
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very careful though, because your basic charge as a sanitary
landfill designer is to get maximum fill volume in your site.
That's where you get economy of operation, and the long life.
You have to very jealously guard against any attempt on the
part of this final use plan to accelerate the filling of the
fill by reducing grades. You have to help him with his
imagination a little bit. I haven't done one, yet, but I
sure do like the idea of ski slopes, high ones.
When the final grading plan is agreed upon, then you can
begin to develop the operating procedures which you will follow
as you construct the landfill.
At this time you can also begin your design of erosion
control plan. If excess excavation is available you must now
decide whether you're going to limit excavation required for
cover material or whether you're going to market the excess.
This is a decision that has to be made for each site and each
set of circumstances.
If adequate cover is unavailable on the site selected,
you must locate a source and have it made available to you.
One of the things that was mentioned this morning by Peter
Vardy, which I would like to emphasize, is that while there is
a lot of information on the type of material you should use for
cover, the fact is, that you almost always use the material on
hand and then accommodate the material that you have on hand by
design and consideration in your construction. A basic fact of
life, maybe that doesn't suit some people, but it's true.
If the quantity and type of refuse are known then you can
estimate your truck delivery rates, load count, that sort of
thing, which will help you lay out your on-site storage area,
your on-site access roads, and provide the on-site storage
lanes to accommodate peak vehicle flow rates.
Receiving facilities usually vary in sophistication
depending on the life of the fill, the location, and climatic
conditions. Normally, the receiving area consists of an
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entrance treatment of some kind—we have grown to accept this
because it helps the public image—a scale, a scale house-office
separate sanitary facilities for the landfill operators other
than those used by the people driving the delivery vehicles to
the site, and some type of maintenance-storage-equipment-fueling
facility for the landfill equipment. For sites with a life of
up to about seven years, mobile trailers for offices and sanitary
facilities and very lightly constructed equipment-fueling-storage
facilities are usually considered adequate.
For longer life sites, a little improved entrance treat-
ment such as a brick wall with a sign on it, some planting, and
more permanent construction can usually be justified by this
longer period of amortization. Modified pre-engineered buildings
are normally considered adequate for more permanent construction.
We have a broad area here where we can draw a lot of things from
pre-engineered buildings and save some dollars again.
The receiving facility is usually provided with security
lighting and fencing which can be arranged to give you access
control during periods of non-operation.
The type of fill operation developed should be arranged to
give you maximum fill volume. And if you get the idea that I'm
one of these designers who tries to get every ton of fill on a
site he can get, you're right. Because I know the agony of
finding the next one and we don't write them off very fast/
and I don't think anybody else does, either.
The trench method, the area method, or a combination of
the two is frequently considered. While the trench method has
application on some sites, it reduces potential volume and,
in my opinion and experience, is being used less and less these
days.
In the past we have designed every cell of every fill,
however, we recognize that cellular construction beyond that
attained by daily, intermediate, and final cover offers very
little value to a site. And I'll discuss that one with you
anytime you want to.
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We have tended to get away from this costly engineering
procedure. On a big fill it can be 26 or 30 drawings at $200
a drawing. That's pretty expensive. The basic thing we think
you need now is to provide an excavation or site preparation
on the plan, a final grading plan which is necessary, and then
dimensioned cross-sections through the fill in adequate detail
to allow the operator to develop his own intermediate lift
elevations just prior to field stake-out. You have to develop
those cross-sections anyway if you're really going to calculate
the volume of the site, and it's a very simple matter to make
these available.
If special wastes are anticipated which cannot be incor-
porated in the general landfill, you have to have additional
provisions for them. And in 15 minutes you don't talk about
those, obviously. (Don Andres gave you some indication as to
what you're up against.) If special safe-guards are required,
they should be worked out with the appropriate regulatory
agency at this time. Don't spend all your design dollars
running around figuring out what you think is right and then
have it reviewed. They'll cooperate with you and be glad to
do it.
A sequence of fill construction should be developed which
will give the operator flexibility while maintaining proper
operating procedures during the filling process. This also
allows for phased ultimate site development. It also lets you
get out of the maintenance of the completed landfill and gets it
over to the final user. This is desirable from an operative
standpoint.
While research is being conducted on leachate recirculation
and artificial barrier construction for the collection of leachate,
at present, most designers try to select sites which avoid these
costly concepts. They must be considered, in my opinion at least,
in the trial and error early development stages. And they might
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have potential in the future to allow you to use some marginal
sites where savings in haul costs can justify these additional
development costs, but most of us try to avoid that at this
stage in the development.
When the filling procedure has finally been developed,
the operating equipment and manpower requirements are deter-
mined by the engineer and included in a basic operating manual.
This equipment selection should be done cooperatively with the
landfill operator in order to take advantage of his preferences
and his existing labor practices.
If the landfill operator has had no experience, he should
still be involved with equipment selection so he has an under-
standing of what you expect the equipment to do. It doesn't do
any good just to give him a bulldozer and say, "Here, guy, learn
to push the levers." A chart of the equipment and manpower
with tasks defined should be put in the operating manual for
ready reference. In addition, the provision for back-up labor
and equipment should be developed and set forth at this time.
The basic landfill development and operating costs are
developed near the end of this phase of the engineering effort.
The estimates must be accurate enough to allow for the funding
you need and revenue you expect from the operation to set up
your cash flow for the project. While this information is often
included in the operating manual for public agency clients, the
privileged information is more normally transmitted confidentially
to the private client. It's nobody else's business.
All of the above operating data and information, with the
exception of costs, should be incorporated in an operating
manual. It becomes the operating manual for the fill. This
should be submitted at this time in draft form to the regulatory
agency for review with a formal request for permit.
The value of submitting the draft is that any modifications
that are made during the review stage can be incorporated in the
operating manual during the final printing and you don't end up
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with an operating manual with an eight or ten-page supplement,
which is going to end up as solid waste.
Monitoring requirements are usually developed during the
review and they also are included in the final manual. Half-
scale prints of the operation are usually included in the manual
for ready reference and full-scale drawings are used for actual
construction and record-keeping.
Preparing exhibits for public hearings and things of
that nature is basically Phase 2.
Phase 3 is the final facility drawings and specifications,
basic engineering, and there's nothing very different than when
you design a building. The plans and specifications are prepared
primarily to allow for competitive bidding if it's a public
client or private direct negotiation.
That's primarily Phase 3 and it's postponed until that
time, again to keep from spending the dollars that are necessary
until you get the permit. It also gives you something to do
during this period of time when the public's telling you what a
bum you are for wanting to locate a dump in their backyard.
The final phase is field engineering, and it's one of the
most important control devices of any sanitary landfill
operation. Each area and each fill lift should be staked for
line and grade to guide the equipment operator as he places the
refuse and ocmpacts it and places the cover material.
If a site requires excavation, grades are also required to
assure that overexcavation is avoided. If a minimum earth
barrier is provided at the bottom of the fill, excess excavation
depth can destroy this basic groundwater protection.
The subsequent lift stake-out can be used as a check on
the grades achieved during the previous filling. A record of
this data, when kept on prints of the landfill plan, offers a
pictorial chart of fill progress and can be readily converted to
in-place densities.
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Settlement plates are a good idea. They give you a good
indication of what you have in settlement on the fill, and they
also help the operator plan his own operation from a control
standpoint. That also gives the designer some basis for
planning future fills.
An additional engineering service offered by many
designers and used by some operators is the periodic inspection
and field check which allows him to go out and check the
operation for general compliance with the plan. This is beyond
the regulatory agency check. They check on the environmental
protection.
In summary, while many landfill operators in the past have
failed to recognize the need for engineering, it's very
uniformly acceptable now. Most of you know the need. The
cost for this service is significant but it can usually be
reclaimed, as with most good engineering, in improved efficiency
and longer landfill life.
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ENGINEERING SANITARY LANDFILL SITES FOR
VARIOUS CLIMATIC CONDITIONS
William McKie*
When I think about engineering a landfill for winter or
wet-weather operation, I think of my friend Herb on top of a
50,000-pound DH Cat combating a mountain of refuse in tempera-
tures below zero with a 25 mile an hour wind blowing. Or
consider the same situation when the rain is coming down and if
you step off the roadway you're in mud up to your knees. These
are the weather conditions under which sanitary landfills are
operated in Minnesota, as well in many other parts of the
country.
To successfully construct and operate a sanitary, and I
stress the word "sanitary", landfill in winter and in wet
weather, much careful design, planning, and preparatory work
must be done.
First let's discuss the on-site access road. We presume that
an all weather road has been provided to the site and is main-
tained by the local highway department.
The on-site road also needs to be an all-weather road,
because usually if your road fails because of weather you are
out of business. The road should run, of course, from the
entrance all the way back to your landfill area. It should be
designed or constructed to withstand heavy loads in wet weather
as well as in freezing weather. The surface should be blacktop
if possible, but more likely will be made of gravel or crushed
stone.
The road needs regular maintenance to remove chuck holes,
bumps, and ruts. This is especially true in late fall before
it freezes, when these ruts and bumps will be with us all winter.
This can be very damaging to your customers' trucks as well as
to your own landfill equipment. The bouncing of the trucks
*President, McKie Associates, Burnsville, Minnesota
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further disintegrates the road bed, thus adding to the problem.
In building a road bed, it's well to build it higher than
the surrounding area, particularly where there's considerable
snow, because the wind will tend to keep the road clear of
snow. Of course regular snow plowing is probably necessary in
some areas. We also like to make sure the trees and brush are
removed from the sides of the road as far back as possible to
avoid the "snow fence" effect of trees and brush.
The drainage ditching on both sides of the road should be
designed and constructed to keep the road bed as dry as possible
in wet weather and during the spring thawing period. A dry road
bed also helps to minimize or prevent frost heaves and frost.
boils and consequent road breakdown during thawing periods.
The ditches should be capable of handling the snow melt
run-off in the spring and should be so graded as to prevent
standing water at the roadside. Culverts should be provided
where required and should be serviced just before winter comes
to make certain they are clear of obstructions and at the
proper elevation to handle the spring run-off.
It's also important to have a storage pile of washed
gravel or crushed stone located near the road so this can be
used to fill chuck holes or to improve the surface where it
fails. The stockpiled gravel, in some cases crushed stone, or
perhaps incinerator ash can be used also to provide a surface on
new landfill service roads to the immediate landfill area,
which change as the fill proceeds. Most of the time you can
construct this road in decent weather as part of a cover
material operation, but during wet weather or spring thaw, you
are required to put in a more substantial road. So this stockpile
becomes very important in wet weather and, of course, in the
spring thaw period.
Another exceedingly important consideration, which has
been stressed before, is drainage. As we all know, maintaining
drainage control on a sanitary landfill is vital to preventing
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water pollution. It is also critical to keep the water out of
your operational area to prevent an otherwise suitable work
surface from turning into a quagmire when a rainstorm occurs or
when a quick February thaw comes along.
Thus drainage ditches must be constructed around a landfill
to keep surface drainage away from it and, in particular, they
must keep drainage from entering the active fill area; other
ditches should be constructed so they receive drainage from the
active area. These drainage ditches, in colder country, must
be planned and built in the fall before frost occurs to be most
effective, because nobody wants to put in a ditch through three
feet of frost on the ground.
Obviously, careful planning is necessary so that the ditches
are useful four to six months later, when the snow melts. It is
necessary to have a knowledge of the planned winter progress of
the landfill in order to properly locate the drainage system so
it will not be covered by refuse by spring. In regions where
extremely wet weather occurs, it's useful to put in a bad
weather temporary site near the entrance to the landfill or at
least near the good part of your road.
On sites which have soil conditions, like clay, where you
have periods of extremely wet weather, the road may become
unusable and prevent access to the usual unloading area. At
that time it's well to have an alternative site ready to be used.
This site is prepared previously and has a limited capacity and
is close to the entrance or accessible roadway. It is used
only when weather conditions absolutely require it.
Now we come to the problem which is probably the most
predominant in cold weather operation of a landfill, obtaining
cover material. Because a sanitary landfill is not "sanitary"
unless it receives its daily cover of six inches of compacted
clean earthen material, one of the most trying and difficult
problems of wet weather and winter operation is obtaining and
maintaining an adequate supply of usable cover material. Wet
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weather difficulties can be minimized by having a well-drained
area available for excavation or by maintaining a cover material
pile which is well drained to be used only during wet weather
operation.
In Minnesota, the wet weather problem mainly results from
frost. The amount of frost we get is anywhere from three and a
half feet into the ground to seven feet in the northern part
of the state.
There are many more or less successful methods in use for
assuring a cover material supply in frozen ground. They are
based on insulating the material to retain its heat, stockpiling
it to dry it and reduce its moisture content and make it easier
to work, with, or chemically treating it to lower its freezing
point. There is another alternative and that is to provide your
tractor with a ripper and rip the frozen topsoil off to get at
the unfrozen material underneath.
We know one gentleman on a small landfill who saves the
bags of leaves that his householders bring in and puts these
in a pile and spreads them out over a portion of the site he
plans to use in the coming winter for cover material. We also
know of operators who use straw or hay. Another fellow saves
building materials, such as the insulating panels off of ceilings
and demolition material, and he places them on his cover material
pile. He claims the insulative material also sheds the rain and
allows the pile to dry, making it easier to use in winter.
It's almost impossible to provide cover material in very
cold weather at landfills which have mostly clay type soils.
On these sites, the operators usually provide a second source,
probably in a local gravel pit or some other such area.
We know of one operator who builds up his cover material
pile all summer long. He runs an excavating service and as
he brings in cover material he applies calcium chloride to it
before he dumps each load. He's done this for three years
without any problems.
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Most major landfill operators in the State dig their cover
material as they go, and they are fortunate enough to have sites
where the soil material is suitable. However, they protect the
area by preventing anyone from walking on the snow over the
area where they're going to dig in or from driving snowmobiles
or trucks or even running their own machines on it. They dig
the sod progressively through the winter, and on the worst days
they encounter probably six to 12 inches of frozen soil in their
usual digging place. And they get by with using a tractor to
knock this loose.
Of course there's the alternative to protecting the cover
material and that is to provide a ripper on your tractor and
actually tearing up the frozen ground and then getting at the
unfrozen soil underneath.
Another vital element of design is providing a good
building in which to keep the equipment. We've seen major
landfills operate without protection for the equipment and it
results in fantastic wear on the equipment because of neglect
and the lack of maintenance. The operator certainly doesn't want
to be out there servicing his machine when the weather is below
zero and the wind is blowing.
Another important aspect is providing adequate fencing
around the site. Whereas the snow will cover up most of the
unsightly litter in winter, the coming of spring reveals the
widespread accumulation, if fencing is not provided. Snow
cover also makes periodic pickup on neighboring properties
impractical unless you can find a Boy Scout Troop that wants
to practice on their snowshoes, and this is sometimes done.
The fence has to be strong enough to stand the force of the
wind when plastered with an accumulation of plastic bags and
paper. It should be cleaned periodically to maintain its
effectiveness.
Probably more important is the portable or movable fencing
which is placed on the leeward side of the active unloading
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area. These sections should be at least 10 feet high, and
we've seen some operators build them 16 feet high. It is
important to build them so they move easily in snow and yet be
heavy enough to keep them from blowing over when covered with
litter.
It's also important in cold country to provide snow
fencing for your roadways. In some places we've seen, snow
fences are placed on the windward side of the landfill to keep
snow out of the landfill.
As far as the site preparation is concerned, in designing
the work we look at the terrain, the drainage, the soil con-
ditions, prevailing wind direction, available screening, and
the size and type of earth moving equipment for the site. We
usually do this in consultation with the operator.
We also concur with the last gentleman's statements with
regard to putting as much refuse as possible on the site and
we look at the economics of moving the least amount of earth
to do this.
We feel that the trenching method is useful, perhaps only
where the soils are fairly granular and mostly we've seen the
area fill method in use or the progressive slope method, which
is a modification of it.
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ACHIEVING MAXIMUM COMPACTION IN A SANITARY LANDFILL
Wayne Trewhitt*
Synopsis
Mr. Trewhitt's company operates two sanitary landfills,
one at Mountain View, California and the other near Reno,
Nevada.
He said that at the California site, the company is required
by contract to obtain a 1200-pound-per-cubic-yard compaction of
the waste, because the site will be used as a. park when it is
completed. The company considers it essential to keep the
working face as small as possible and is able to do so by
using specialized unloading procedures. Hard-to-handle objects,
such as water heaters and washing machines, are crushed on the
ground by an 80,000-pound tractor before being spread on the
face. Numerous slides were used to show the equipment and
techniques employed.
There is no requirement to achieve a similar density at
Reno. He described the operation there as being fairly typical
of smaller sanitary landfills elsewhere in the country. Much
stress is placed on maintaining a small working face, and slides
were shown to depict the unloading, spreading, and compacting
techniques followed.
*Vice President, Easley and Brassy, San Francisco, California
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QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION
Albert Weitz: Wayne, you're obviously working with very
sophisticated contours in that San Bruno operation. What
sort of ratio do you have in cover material to solid wastes?
Wayne Trewhitt: They project five to one.
Albert Weitz: Are you able to maintain that?
Wayne Trewhitt: Fairly close.
Bob Redding: I've got another question for Mr. Trewhitt.
We have a running feud with the equipment salesman. We say
there is no need for compactors on our small landfills. What
size, in your experience, would you recommend where land is
not too expensive?
Wayne Trewhitt: I think it depends on the ultimate end
use of the land. We found in smaller operations a crawler
machine of one type or another is much more versatile and can
do more jobs and do them better. If compaction really isn't
required, like it is in Mountain View, you're better off to stay
with a more versatile machine. If you have a high land value
and a high end use, then it's very important to get compaction.
The more, the better.
John Vanderveld: I might add, too, that the more compaction
achieved during the fill in practice, the more value the land is
going to have afterwards due to its stability.
Robert Mithcell: Mr. Trewhitt, what is the operational
cost of obtaining the 1200-pounds-per-yard compaction?
Wayne Trewhitt: We handle about 2300 tons a day at that
site. We operate one 9-hour shift with one D8 and one 826
compactor, both running around sixty-five to seventy-five
thousand pounds. That's all the equipment that's required to
achieve that density in that one site.
Robert Mitchell: What is that figure in dollars per ton?
Wayne Trewhitt: You can operate each machine for about
$35 an hour, so we're talking about $700 a day. We're looking
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at thirty cents a ton for just the placing of the waste.
John Vanderveld: We have so many variables in the
different landfills, depending on the labor costs, the terrain,
the location of the cover material, the type of material that
comes in, even the moisture content in the material. It's
somewhat dangerous to take a flat figure and say this is what
it costs.
Mr. Trewhitt: I was trying to be as broad as I possibly
could, without getting myself into a lot of trouble.
John Charnetski: Mr. Harrington, what are some of the
major constraints you are confronted with in determining how
much waste you can put into a landfill?
William Harrington: Primarily it's the amount of excavation
you can achieve before you destroy your groundwater protection
and the final grading plan which has to basically be developed,
based on final site use.
There are other things, obviously, such as the drainage
and what you have available to you in terrain and things like
that. But the main constraints are how deep you go and how
high you go. What you try to do is work with the final land
user, again trying to get it out of the control of the refuse
disposal operator and into the control of the operator of the
final use.
Francis Fyles: The Department of Interior keeps coming
into this stating you cannot have any chemicals at all into the
underground water. This is quite a change in our concept. We
had always felt that we could cap these throughly enough so
there would be no chance of leachate. But they're starting to
say that it's impossible. Any comment on that?
William Harrington: There probably is no more miscon-
ception in any area today than what kind of a protective barrier
you should provide to protect underground water. We have heard
some differing requirements. We have heard a rule of thumb of
a foot of earth per foot of fill. You know, something aiding
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the ground, recognizing the earth itself has some correcting
capabilities. We look at the old days of trying to get about
five feet of a pretty good impervious clay cover, and hope you
get a little more. That may have been a little naive.
Basically you try to design your landfill and develop
operating procedures, on-site preparation, off-site drainage,
things of this nature, so you don't get water running through
the fill as it's placed.
You establish your filling procedure so that water that
falls on the refuse is diverted away and down on clean earth to
the silt pond there rather than have it go into the refuse
itself. We do all kinds of things like this to keep from
exceeding the field capacity of the refuse that's placed,
because we know if we don't exceed that field capacity at least
it's not going to move off the site. So this is one of the
primary things that most of us do today.
I know there are some other things being done with this
business of the impervious barrier. You show me one that will
last forever and I'll be very happy to look into the economics
of applying it. I don't know one, yet.
So usually when you find leachate, for example, on a fill,
it will be spotty. If you go on this concept I'm talking
about, trying to get all the water around it and not exceeding
the field capacity, you can handle that.
Then if you do get into areas where you have large
quantities of leachate and you have a good barrier underneath,
there has been no testing yet that we've seen in this country—and
I guess if I interpret what I heard earlier this summer or fall
on the United Kingdom experience—there is no indication that
even from the fills with some pretty doggone stuff in them, with
the clay barrier, that's a minimum of five feet, and some of that
questionable, that you really have any chemicals down into the
ground water or significant degradation.
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Now we all know that hardness is increased. We got a
little CO going down, and some things like that, but some of
these arbitrary regulations that people come up with because
they don't have enough information to develop realistic ones
can be pretty tough to live by.
And I can't tell you the answer to that, except to try to
apply the best technology you have today and then test it.
That's the way you're going to have to develop the background.
Louis Olive: What criteria does one use when you
consider the trench method versus above ground sanitary
landfill methods relative to the water table and the economics
involved.
Wayne Trewhitt: On the trench method, you can only go
through once so this is going to limit the use of your land.
If you can use an area method, it doesn't have to start at
ground level but can go down to the same depth as your trench
method can, which we're doing in Mountain View.
As far as the water table is concerned, it depends on
what's in the water. Is it potable water? Is it perch water
table, is it usable groundwater? Then how do you go about
sealing the waste from the water? It's all a matter of
economics and how valuable the land is and how you want to
proceed, and what the rules and regulations are of the
governing bodies that are going to regulate you.
William Harrington: I'll tell you how I figure when to use
the trench method. If you have a small operation where you
really can't justify a lot of equipment and you have relatively
inexpensive land and plenty of it, then you can go in and have
a trench excavated which can be drained naturally after it's
excavated.
On a rental equipment basis, you can put pans on the job for two
weeks, let them dig your trench that will last you for three
months. Then you can operate your fill with one relatively
small piece of equipment. Now this is a proper application of
the trench method.
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If you have a large fill and you have land that's
difficult to get and you have equipment on the site anyway,
which will allow you to set up a day-in-day-out operation for
each piece of equipment, you're better off to go ahead and
excavate. Because if you can excavate it to the bottom of the
trench you can also excavate it and build yourself an area
fill or the advancing slope, which is the modification.
Use the material you have, stockpile it for future cover.
You can also do that with the trench method, but you're limited
to the amount of earth taken out of the trench for covering
the trench and also cover for succeeding lifts, unless you're
going to borrow from another part of the site.
But the best use of it that I can find is in this first
example, where it's a small operation, something under 35 tons
a day. In that league you would use rental equipment, get
them on and off the job and then settle down to your day-in-day-
out operation of placing the cover with a small frontend loader.
Edward Heil: Mr. Harrington, you stated you liked ski
lifts and the higher, the better. What is the cost when you
start getting over a certain height relative to working at a
lower area of the land?
William Harrington: Every time I get facetious I get
caught. I never did a ski lift in my life. But it's a good
question and it's a reasonable question.
I don't have cost figures to give you but I could tell
you the kind of thing you're into. As you start going up, each
lift gets smaller. You have the difficulty of maintaining your
access roads up a fairly steep incline unless you have a big
area where you can make the sharp grade on one end.
You have to at least have cover material somewhere or a
stockpile of it if you really go many lifts above ground, and
it can be costly because of the multiple handling of the cover
material and more costly road construction to get your refuse
trucks up there.
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It was meant to be a little bit facetious and only to
emphasize the point that we try to get as much refuse on a site
as we can.
William McKie: We made an analysis of a ski hill and
determined that on the overall basis, the cost of handling
material to build a ski hill was approximately one-third more
than on the usual slope.
William Harrington: For the benefit of the gentleman
from the Virgin Islands, on a small operation he could have
both ends of this, he could go pick up all the dirt, let's say,
four foot off of the groundwater or whatever the regulations
are in your area, on the trench. The material you stockpiled,
you may put successive rows which would create artificial
trenches and just put it together like a layer cake until you
reached a desired elevation. That way you can keep your landfill
nice and clean. You can minimize the size of your operation.
William McNulty: Mr. Trewhitt showed us what he did with
one tire but I was wondering if anyone on the panel had any
experience with tires when they come in truckload lots from a
retread factory, for example.
Wayne Trewhitt: Yes, we've had that experience, too.
We just spread them out on the working face as far as possible
and cover them like we did that one tire.
If you're putting them in a deep canyon fill, it really
doesn't make any difference whether you spread them out,
because the weight of the additional lifts will eventually
crush them down so you remove the voids when you get into your
last lifts. But definitely they should be spread out and
covered almost individually.
William Harrington: We had one experience where that was
successful. Normally, if you spread and work your fill a lot,
trying to achieve compaction, they're going to work right on
up unless you really get enough on them to hold them down.
In one area, we designed a landfill that was next to a
flood plain. Since the tires were inert and since the flood
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plain was dry, stable and high enough to allow you to work
equipment on, we actually went in and excavated pits, filled
them with the tires, backfilled with material and took the
excess out. This was an inert material filled in a flood
plain. We did not raise the level of the flood plain and it
didn't seem to hurt anything. That's the only time I've ever
seen tires handled in bulk successfully.
William Culham: I'd like to second what Bill Harrington
said about burying tires. We tried that in the Portland
Metropolitan area. It was a flood plain type of installation.
We have also been looking at individual tire grinders
and this goes back to another process of pre-treatment of any
kind of waste before it gets to a landfill type of operation.
This has been mentioned today.
We have a tire grinder that's been operating on a landfill
for about three months. Down time is relatively minor. They
can run between 1,000 and 1,500 tires a day if they learn. It
does a couple of things. It prepares the material in such a
way that those of you who are operating in wet weather or
snow—the pieces of rubber are somewhere in the neighborhood
of three to four inches—can use the material to obtain some
running surface also.
John Vanderveld: There are a number of manufacturers on
that. I know we have done the same thing in some of our land-
fills, where we have cut them into smaller pieces in order to
take away some of the buoyancy of the tire. But I think,
basically, if the tires are buried under sufficient weight
they will normally stay put.
Dennis Fenn: I'd just like to comment on two projects
that involve high groundwater table problems. One is in Virginia
Beach, which Mr. Dorer of the State Health Department dreamed
up several years ago, and it's completed now. I'm sure most of
you have heard of it. They're making it into a recreational
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area, presently seeded and a soap box derby track has been
constructed on it. They have developed some information which
we at EPA are in the process of getting out. They do have
some cost and some monitoring information.
In Orlando, Florida, they tried a different approach,
where they actually went in and lowered the groundwater table,
which gave them the ability to trench down four or five feet
and still stay a foot or two above the groundwater. They are
presently comparing this to the method used in most areas in
high groundwater table areas. They're comparing it environmentally
and economically to dumping it on top of the groundwater table,
both types of operations. There's some information on that, also.
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THE NEW EPA SANITARY LANDFILL GUIDELINES
Truett DeGeare*
I assume that having read the program for today, you are-
all aware that the Environmental Protection Agency is proposing
to establish sanitary landfill guidelines. Before I begin to
discuss them, I wish to make one clarification. This is not the
booklet, which some of you may have seen, called Sanitary
Landfill Design and Operation. The guidelines are completely
separate from that publication.
I hope in this brief discussion to answer some rather
basic questions regarding the guidelines, why we have them,
to whom they would apply, and what they are.
The management of solid waste generated by Federal
agencies was first subjected to Federal control in 1966. The
thrust at that time was not to control solid waste management
but to control air pollution through prohibition of open dumps
and burning of solid waste in urban areas.
The first definitive control of Federal solid waste
resulted when the Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1965 was amended
in 1970 by the Resource Recovery Act. In this amendment
Congress charged the administrator of our agency "...in
cooperation with appropriate State, Federal, interstate,
regional and local agencies, and allowing for public comment
by other interested parties... to recommend to appropriate
agencies and to publish in the Federal Register guidelines for
solid waste management systems."
It was further required that these guidelines be consistent
with public health and welfare, air and water quality standards,
and adaptable to appropriate land use plans.
The Solid Waste Disposal Act, as amended, requires that
Federal executive agencies comply with guidelines developed by
the EPA. Compliance with guidelines issued under this authority
*At time of presentation. Chief, Land Disposal Section, Office of
Solid Waste Management Programs, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
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is required of: Each Federal agency having jurisdiction over
any real property or facility which involves solid waste disposal
activities; each Federal agency which permits the use of Federal
property for the disposal of solid waste; and each Federal
agency which issues licenses or permits for disposal of solid
waste or which conducts activities which generate solid waste.
The sanitary landfill guidelines are the first indication
of the intent of the Administrator to promulgate guidelines
for solid waste management. Other guidelines dealing with
other process and unit operations, for instance, special
requirements for handling of pesticides and other hazardous
wastes, will be promulgated later.
We began development of the guidelines shortly after
passage of the Resource Recovery Act. However, efforts had
begun much earlier with our predecessor agencies in developing
state-of-the-art documents on which sound guidelines could be
based. These efforts resulted in the document Sanitary Landfill
Design and Operation, copies of which are available here today.
In developing this document we utilized the knowledge and
skills of individuals recognized in the field of solid waste
management to review and write significant sections. In
addition, the document was reviewed and critiqued by a variety
of Federal agencies; all State solid waste agencies were
solicited for comment, and a variety of professional organiza-
tions was also requested to review and comment on the draft
documents. This rigorous effort resulted in an authoritative
source document on sanitary landfilling.
The guidelines presently proposed underwent a similar
development and review by Federal, State and local agencies,
as well as appropriate professional organizations. They represent
in their present form, the final judgments on the part of EPA
regarding what is required and necessary to assure both environ-
mental protection and acceptable design and operation of
sanitary landfills. They represent objectives that are
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achievable using today's technology while providing flexibility
for unique and specific climatological, geological, geographical/
and related conditions.
Sanitary landfilling is the most widely applied and only
environmentally acceptable land solid waste disposal method
available today. A sanitary landfill is an engineered land
disposal facility at which solid waste is spread in thin
layers, compacted to the smallest practical volume and covered
with soil each operating day in a manner which minimizes
environmental hazards.
The sanitary landfill guidelines are intended to provide
for operations that will have minimum impact on the environment,
and they will apply to both existing and new Federal agency
installations.
The guidelines do not establish new standards but set
forth requirements to ensure that the design, construction,
and operation of sanitary landfills meet the health and
environmental standards for the area in which they are
located. Federal agency sanitary landfills are also expected to
conform to applicable state and local requirements where they
are or become more stringent than those contained in the
guidelines.
The guidelines are presented in the form of Performance:
Requirements and Operating Procedures. The requirements
delineate minimum levels of performance required of general
use sanitary landfills. We recognize that it is possible to
construct a sanitary landfill on nearly all topographies,
although some land formations present unique problems.
While it is impossible to delineate all the techniques
required at every potential site, the Operating Procedures,
which support each basic requirement, are intended to emphasize
specific items of concern and guide designers and operators of
sanitary landfills in satisfying the requirements.
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Owners and operators of sanitary landfills are expected to
employ the most efficient engineering methods available to
satisfy the requirements. The operating procedures represent
such methods based on current knowledge for meeting the
requirements.
If techniques other than those specified are used, it is
the obligation of the proposed facility's owner and operator to
demonstrate to the responsible agency in advance that such
techniques will, in fact, meet the requirements.
There are 13 specific areas covered by the guidelines.
First, requirements which we categorize as "General":
(1) Federal agencies must comply with applicable Federal,
State, interstate, regional, and local standards where they
are more stringent and with the National Environmental
Policy Act of 1969; (2) open burning and open dumping are
prohibited; (3) design and operating plans must be developed
and submitted for review and approval. Other areas addressed
are water quality, air quality, aesthetics, gases, vectors,
safety, site selection, cover application, solid waste accepted,
hazardous and special wastes, equipment, and inspections.
I don't feel that it would be advantageous for me to
read to you each of the requirements and operating procedures.
This is especially true in assuring that specific items within
the guidelines are considered in the proper context. The
Introduction, Definitions, Requirements, and Operating Procedures
which comprise the guidelines should be considered as a single
entity. However, only to indicate the structure of the
guidelines, I will read as an example the language of the
section titled Vectors. "Conditions shall be maintained that
are unfavorable for the harboring, feeding, and breeding of
insects, birds, and rodents."
Within the section there are two operating procedures.
"A. Plans shall include contingency programs for vector
control and the operating authority shall remain prepared at
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all times to implement these procedures. B. All solid waste
shall be covered by the end of each operating day."
In summary, I submit the intent of these guidelines is
that of freeing sanitary landfills from the stigma of being
catch-alls for any and all unwanted materials and of placing
them in the realm of an engineered method of solid waste
disposal based on the protection of the environment and health
of the nation.
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QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION
Bryan Miller: The statement that all the States were
requested and did review that document, or any predecessors,
is not true. Even though New Mexico requested of the Dallas
Regional Office preliminary copies, we were refused a look at
them. The question I pose to you is, did EPA in the development
of this document bother to visit the various States to see the
conditions that existed before they adopted or wrote such a
document?
Truett DeGeare: Our agency has been routinely visiting the
States and observing the conditions, not only for purposes of
developing these guidelines but as part of our normal program.
I will look into the matter of whether or not you were able
to review a draft copy.
Bryan Miller: Will you tell me the individual who came
to New Mexico to look at the conditions?
Truett DeGeare: I can't tell you at this time, no. I
would also like to add that these guidelines are presently
under development. The process of promulgating them includes
publication in the Federal Register. When they are published,
a statement will be included to inform those desiring to do
so that they may comment directly to our Agency regarding the
contents of the guidelines.
John Vanderveld: Truett, what is your office doing in
adding to the guidelines for such concepts as milling of refuse?
Truett DeGeare: The overall concept of the guidelines is
to provide requirements based on maintenance of environmental
quality. In doing so there is flexibility to allow for
operations of various designs, and that includes those types
of operations.
John Vanderveld: Is it the intent to develop, then,
operating standards?
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Truett DeGeare: No, that is not the intent.
Keith Kelton: I have a question regarding the responsi-
bility or conditions the regional office will place on the
implementation of these guidelines. Will they have the latitude
to make judgment decisions in cases where your guidelines
cannot be all inclusive, such as places where sanitary landfills
are not applicable, even for the recovery of incinerator
residue? This would apply in permafrost areas.
Truett DeGeare: I feel that there is an inherent flexi-
bility in the guidelines, and this will require interpretation.
Now the interpretation is going to be a policy matter which will
be established by the Agency.
H. Lanier Hickman: I'm with the Office of Solid Waste
Management Programs of the EPA. I want to add something
further to what Truett said.
Recognize first that these guidelines apply only to Federal
agencies. That is the limitation of the law, and that is the
application of the law we presently operate under.
There is an inherent flexibility within the guidelines
which I think all of us who have worked in the field for a long
time know you have to have, because you cannot write a standard
or a pseudo standard that's going to be applicable precisely in
all instances, in all conditions everywhere, under all circumstances.
There is no procedure built into the guidelines at this
time or within the management of the program that will allow
for regional variations which will not comply with the basic
requirements of the guidelines.
We have a lot of work going on in leachates, gas control,
and milling. All of these are areas that will have to be
built into our requirements of Federal agencies at a later time.
All of you, I'm sure, are aware of the amount of effort we are
putting in up at Madison on the milling project. Bob Ham,
who will be here later, has done a marvelous job working on this
project.
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We have a present position statement on the use of milled
landfills which we are getting ready to modify slightly based
on the most current information we have from our efforts in
Madison. We are also trying to visit, collect data, and
ascertain the results of this same type of operation in other
parts of the United States where the climate, geography, and
the characteristics of the area differ from those at Madison.
Contrary to what the gentleman from New Mexico says, I
personally sent copies of the draft guidelines to every State.
I won't debate it here with him. I'll debate it separately at
a different time, because this is no forum for that. But we
did solicit comments from all States.
Kenneth Lustig: I want to know, on Page 37 of the guidelines
it says no burning of waste shall be allowed in a sanitary
landfill. Has EPA looked into these air curtain destructors.
I know they are using them in Montana, Virginia, and St. Louis.
If so, do you have any comment?
Truett DeGeare: There is a direct prohibition of open
dumping, so you can assess that type of process as maintaining
environmental quality. Consider it as controlled burning
rather than open burning, then you may do so.
Kenneth Lustig: Does EPA have any standing on the
utilization of that type of machinery?
Truett DeGeare: Our standards meet the environmental
standards.
Grant Walton: If the States have more stringent guidelines
than the current Federal ones, will Federal installations be
required to meet the State guidelines?
Truett DeGeare: Our guidelines say yes.
Marvin Reid: Since the guidelines are being drawn up for
all Federal agencies, would this include any dump that receives
any waste from a Federal agency, such as a post office, soil
conservationist office, or anything like that?
John Vanderveld: The question is, does it apply to
government disposal on a site for any purpose?
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Truett DeGeare: I read very specific cases in which the
guidelines would apply and basically what one of them said was
that the guidelines will apply to a Federal installation that
produces solid waste.
Robert Robinson: 1 have no complaint about not receiving
the guidelines, but we received about three sets and they
progressively got worse.
We had no real serious complaints with the original
January issue that I received, but a case in point is the
fact that the January issue talked about a 50-year design
flood. Here they talk about the idea of using engineering
to lay out a landfill so it will be properly upgraded, and then
they come along and say in the January issue you report
designing to take care of a 50-year flood. I agree with that
100 percent.
They ought to certainly have flood protection to 50
years, maybe 100 years. But the last issue, in September,
reports that the bottom of that landfill has got to be above the
50-year design flood, and that leaves no opportunity for
engineering design. They are eliminating the possibility to
properly engineer. They're getting it down to you becoming
a technician utilizing their regulations, and they're leaving
no alternative to the States to establish their regulations
because from what we've just heard, every landfill in every
State, except maybe one or two percent, is going to receive
some small amount of Federal waste.
What you're going to have happen is to have countywide
and regional systems which we're trying to promote and then
the Federal government is going to have to come in and spend a
lot of money to take care of a few tons of Federal waste in
some areas, to take care of the waste the way they want it taken
care of.
Fortunately we don't have construction grants to control
us in the way that they do in water pollution, but it looks like
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they're going to do it through other means.
Truett DeGeare: May I ask if you have a copy of the
guidelines?
Robert Robinson: Yes, I do.
Truett DeGeare: If you would check the statement about
flood plain, it's not a requirement, it's an operating procedure.
And as I stated, these operating procedures are intended as
guides.
Robert Robinson: It's under Section 2, Requirements.
Truett DeGeare: That's correct, under Section 2, Re-
quirements, there's a requirement 2.1.0 and under that require-
ment there's a section called Operating Procedures, indicated
by 2.1.1. And it's within the operating procedures that you
will find that statement.
Robert Robinson: I don't see that it makes any difference.
Truett DeGeare: It's a significant difference. A
requirement is one based on maintenance of environmental
quality. In order to do that, if you would read the intro-
duction, there is a provision for flexibility in design in
meeting those requirements. According to the introduction and
my previous statement, the operating procedures are there
merely as guides to meet the requirements.
John Vanderveld: As I understand it, there is a meeting
being held tonight with the Federal EPA and State representatives
at which there's going to be further discussion of the guide-
lines. If so, perhaps some of these questions could wait until
then.
As I understand it, the guidelines are still being reviewed
and being worked on. It is the desire and the hope of the
private sector and the planners and designers that these
guidelines be further developed jointly so that the input
from everyone involved in the development of sanitary landfill
systems can be added. This has been the attitude that's been
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displayed throughout the development of the guidelines to
this point and I'm sure it is continuing.
Carl Sexton: Has it been said that once these guidelines
are adopted, that every landfill operator, whether private or
public, will have to comply with these guidelines if he accepts
any refuse from any Federal agency?
Truett DeGeare: The burden will be on the Federal agency
to comply with the guidelines and proper disposal of wastes
which they generate.
Carl Sexton: My question is, does the operator of the
landfill have to comply with these guidelines? That's my
question.
John Talty: If he's under a contract with a Federal
agency, then he does. If he's under a contract with a
Federal agency to dispose of its solid waste, he would have to
meet the requirements of the guidelines. But the burden is on
the Federal agency.
Charles Scott: If that's the case, then, when we draw up
a contract with the Federal agency and it inserts that par-
ticular clause as having to comply with the Federal agency's
recommendations, then the responsibility after we have accepted
that contract is going to effectively become the responsibility
of private sector for compliance, not the Federal agency,
because they've already done their bit. Is this right?
John Talty: I'd say you would want to charge them
appropriately for the service you provide them.
Samuel Hale: Changes will be made in the guidelines
prior to their going out as actual semistandards. In addition,
Federal agencies will be required to develop implementation
schedules meeting both the municipal incinerator guidelines and
the sanitary landfill guidelines. That is, the two guidelines
do not immediately take effect for all uses the next day,
rather implementations will stretch over some period of time.
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Whether that's a one-year, two-year, or three-year period,
that's difficult to say at this time.
John Vanderveld: Who can make comments on these
guidelines and submit them to your office?
Samuel Hale: Anybody can make comments on these guidelines.
The primary commentators we are looking to are all the State
agencies and people operating in the field, but any public
citizen can make any comment he desires.
John Vanderveld: Have you developed a method for
receiving these comments or could you give some guidance to the
people who are in the room as to what procedure they are to
follow in submitting comments to your office?
Samuel Hale: When the guidelines are formally published
in the Federal Register, which I suspect will be no less than
one month from now, we will try to publicize that publication
formally through the journals and so forth. When we do that,
there will be a formal address where comments will be received.
Obviously, the best place to send comments is to my office or
John Talty's office.
Charles Scott: I am very concerned about how we, the
private sector, can get into our hands in time to reply to the
publication in the Federal Register, the contents of whatever
that publication is going to be. Because it seems to me, if
we only have 30 days after it gets into the Register and into
our association publications and we get it and read it, the
first thing you know, it's Christmas time again. If we're
going to be allowed to comment on its content, I think there
ought to be some way that our association would make that
publication available to us immediately.
Truett DeGeare: On behalf of our Agency, the Federal
Register is the means for disseminating the proposal and we're
doing our part.
Charles Scott: The Federal Office would become very,
very busy if one day all private operators from the State
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made a journey to review it, because that's the way we would
have to do it.
Eugene Wingerter: Within the last few weeks we have
distributed many copies to the States. Now there are over
200 members of the Institute and I think one of the most
practical ways of disseminating this information is when it is
published in the Federal Register, we'll send out a special
bulletin.
I know many of you don't receive the Federal Register and
probably wouldn't see this unless it was disseminated to you.
We'll have a list of names of the members of the Institute
and, as I mentioned this morning, anyone is welcome to join the
Institute. For those of you who are not sure whether you are
members, sign up out there and we'll see that you're on the
mailing list and we'll send you copies. You can in turn
respond either directly to EPA or you can send it back to NSWMA
and we'll give them to EPA for evaluation. This is probably the
most expedient procedure I can suggest at this time.
Alfred Chipley: I'm kind of simple so I'll just ask a
simple-minded question. I think these things are marvelous.
They're unworkable, perhaps, but marvelous.
Solid waste is really all inclusive. I think I read one
of your guidelines which said all wastes shall be covered
daily. And somewhere else it says that no wastes shall be
deposited within the water table. Now did you mean all
wastes, demolition waste, bricks, stuff like this?
Truett DeGeare: That's correct.
Robert Silvachi: A question to anyone on the Board. Are
there any existing methods known whereby you can treat sanitary
landfill drainage successfully?
Wayne Trewhitt: Emcon—Pete Vardy, who spoke a little
earlier this morning,—is doing a study for EPA in California
in which they're actually recycling leachate back into the
waste, and there have been some studies done on algae. I'm
not too familiar with those who clean up leachate, but I
think there have been some studies done, and they're continuing.
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William Harrington: One of the things you do, at least
with sludge, is pump it back up onto the fill and let it filter
through the soil, which is essentially what Peter Vardy is
doing out there.
The other thing is very basic. It depends on what you
are after. If you just slap some chlorine in your siltation
pond it becomes a double duty device. If you have a pond that
allows you to collect and do some treatment prior to discharge,
chlorine still works. It depends on what you are after.
If you have heavy metals, there's not much you can do except
get it on the ground somewhere to filter.
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PANEL C
DEVELOPING SANITARY LANDFILL PROGRAMS
MODERATOR: Gerald Neely*
*Director of Engineering, Mid America Regional Council,
Kansas City, Missouri
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THE ROLE OF THE STATE IN LAND DISPOSAL
Floyd Forsberg*
It's a pleasure for me to be here to discuss a little
bit of Minnesota's program with you.
We're related with air,.^»ater, and solid wastes, and
now noise pollution, and I've been asked to refer my comments
to State land disposal policies, communications and public
education programs, and coordination with and assistance to the
local governments relating to landfill programs.
In Minnesota, the land disposal policy involves a regional
county-controlled system. The system relates to the collection,
the transportation, the intermediate reduction, and ultimate
disposal of landfill practices.
I'd like to give you a little bit of background relating to
Minnesota. We have approximately 900 open dumps, 87 percent of
which are burning, 85 percent are salvaging, and 25 percent.
have water problems. Only about one percent of the operators
indicated that they had any intentions of upgrading or concern
about final use of their particular site.
The solid waste disposal standards and regulations that
we've developed became law in the spring of 1970. They were
written as a base standard for handling all wastes. By this, I
mean other standards can be branched off from the base standard,
such as we now have regarding feedlot waste and also auto hulks.
Legislation that was passed in the '69 session charged us
to adopt standards recognizing that no one standard is applicable
to the entire State. This meant taking into consideration
population densities, existing physical conditions, topography,
soils, transportation, and land use. We were encouraged to
develop and expand existing solid waste disposal programs
and provide three basic things: planning, technical aid, and
enforcement assistance.
•Director, Solid Waste Division, Minnesota Pollution Control
Agency, Minneapolis, Minnesota
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In view of this legislative charge, I felt I had to
surround myself with a staff of chemical engineers, geologists,
agricultural engineers, and some clerical staff. Just recently
the Attorney General has seen fit to appoint an attorney to
my staff.
Knowing very well, with a small staff, 835 municipalities,
and about 900 dumps in the State, I had to look at a different
branch of government than the local government to give the
responsibility to. This was the county level. In the State
we have 87 counties, of which seven constitute our metro
Twin City area and approximately 50 percent of the State's
population. We felt a county-wide system plan was the direction
to pursue.
The complexities and many variables involved suggested a
need for regional approaches as a way to come to grips with
the solid waste problems and lead to long-lasting solutions
that are both effective and satisfactory to the region at large.
By requiring a systematic approach in achieving the objective of
a regional solid waste plan, we feel that any one segment in this
management system is less likely to be omitted.
In making a system analysis of a county, the functions of
solid waste handling, storage, collection, transportation, the
recycling or intermediate volume reduction methods and ultimate
disposal must be considered if the integrated operation is to
be comprehensive. We felt no independent operation could
function.
The area to be included in a comprehensive solid waste
management system must encompass the largest feasible
geographical area of present and predicted solid waste generation
and include disposal sites for at least 20 years.
Traditional political boundaries should not be the determin-
ing factor. We felt that multi-county cooperation in this
regard could promote uniform enforcement throughout the area
and that it would be much easier to obtain State or Federal
assistance, if and when it ever became available.
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To develop an areawide program, county government officials
must meet with cities within the county and neighboring juris-
dictions to identify similar problems which can be solved
jointly.
The advantage of areawide comprehensive cooperative activity
is to: (1) eliminate duplication of initial surveys; (2) have
greater flexibility in locating disposal sites; (3) more easily
obtain support from local news media; (4) arrange greater
discounts for volume orders of collection and disposal equipment;
(5) secure coordination of air and water pollution abatement
activities; and (7) achieve a better chance for assistance and
economics of scale in such things as administrative costs, land
acquisitions, and construction costs.
A preliminary plan for the solid waste management system,
which was submitted in July 1971, consisted of a policy state-
ment indicating the progress and direction of the study and a
preliminary brief about existing solid waste practices,
conditions, and facilities. The final solid waste management
system was due on July 1st, 1972 and was to have been adopted
by the Board of Commissioners of the county or counties it
related to.
Other legislation that was enacted, relating to solid waste
management planning, was that of the Metropolitan Council. It
was to adopt a long-range plan identifying the ultimate disposal
as landfill in the seven county area and the acre feet needed
for the next 15 to 20 years. The county level of government
was to be the operating agent, the Metropolitan Council the
planning agency, and the State the regulatory agency.
This has been accomplished and a reduction of 70 open
dumps transition to 15 licensed landfills now exist in this
area. And well over the majority of those are private
operations.
We also developed a State plan stipulating that solid
waste management systems must be developed on a regional level
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with ultimate disposal in landfills. The plan has been
accepted by the Governor and Mr. Ruckelshaus, and 85 percent
of the counties have submitted final workable plans or signed an
agreement to submit a plan by the summer of 1973.
The 1971 legislation session passed a County Permissive Act
under which county governments could levy up to 3 mills to
subsidize and develop a countywide system. One chapter in that
permissive bill made it mandatory that each county cooperate
with our agency to set up an inspection and a policing program
within its jurisdiction.
Through the efforts of a requirement to receive subsidy
from our auto hulk program and also the provision of this
county act, we now have what we call 87 "Hit Men". Every
"Hit Man" is in the county and he may be the zoning adminis-
trator, a county commissioner, an engineer, but someone
designated by each board to be responsible for solid waste
management for that county.
Also, a part of the solid waste management plan, a program
to abolish the existing system and close all non-conforming
sites if they didn't meet the state requirements along with a
compliance schedule.
Communications and public education is an absolute must
to enable any such system to become a reality. Coordinating
planning, permits, and a close liaison with both the water
and air quality divisions of our agency in the Environmental
Health Division of the State Health Department were our first
steps in communications.
Also, all staff members of the division are sent to all
suggested Federal Environmental Protection Agency courses and
with the assistance of their staff, regional schools have been
and are being held in Minnesota. Invitations to were sent the
public but more specifically to operators, consultants, public
officials, auditors and county "hit men". We are just completing
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a series of four regional meetings in Minnesota today at which
an average of 50 to 75 have attended.
I'd just like to comment on a three-day case study of our
State program by the EPA and who we contacted and what some
of the results were.
The team consisting of financial, intergovernmental, basic
data and regulatory backgrounds came to see us in Minnesota to
review our program. We first met with the environmental liaison
staff member of the governor's office. Next we met with the
Metro-Council officials relating to regional solid waste
management systems. The Attorney General's office and staff
members of the legislative committees concerned with the
environment were next. Also, an environmental financing unit
of the budget division discussed the program with the team along
with the director of the State planning agency and the office
of local government affairs.
One of the largest haulers in the area discussed his
operation, how it related to the program, and visited one of the
local landfills discussing his operation with the owner himself.
The reason for the survey was to identify the liaison with
the State program through all levels of government, regulatory
agencies and private industry and get an indication from them
on how the program relates and if they are aware of the program
and how it relates to the community and their responsibility
and just what exactly landfills are and how they relate to
the program.
I'm happy to report that each of the above knows what a
landfill is and what a solid waste management system is and we
are continuing through various civic groups, professional
organizations, conferences, symposiums, and discussions with
public and private officials to explain these practices. We
also have films available and our staff for local use relating
to the League of Women Voters and the League of Municipalities
because we attend their meetings and we feel these are a must.
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One last work in regard to communication and public
education is legislative lobbying. I know some of you people
maybe can't do this on a State level but I feel it's of utmost
importance in relationship of the role of the State in landfill
proposal programs. I feel writing or assisting in writing a
State act, local ordinances are an absolute must. At the
present time I'm writing new legislation relating to hazardous
material, licensing of landfill operators, and permit fees. I
feel if I believe in these proposals, I must sit with the
senator or with the representative who's going to carry the
bills so he can completely understand the comments and also
testify in their behalf.
One thing, and I've been associated with this since '68,
I feel that politics, communications, and public education are
necessary tools to ensure that regulatory agencies such as I'm
associated with get into the regulations the proper and
reasonable tools for land disposal.
Coordinating with the assisting local government and
private industry in establishing landfill programs basically
relate to support. First of all we must be sure that they
have and know what the State or local regulations contain.
Discussing this with Bill Harrington and other private consultants,
one of the most important phases of a program or system is
getting together all the people who are going to be involved
in the development of a program. In the primary or preliminary
stages, this involves them in a field survey and preliminary
plan review; support at hearings will assist in approval of
any good plan. This can save embarrassment, can save money
and time, properly protect the environment and do what's right
for the community.
We are finding out that if you are reasonable and assist
in the development of a good sound system plan, it will become
a reality. Local government needs assistance and local
ordinances to run a good landfill. We've developed in Minnesota
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model ordinances and many are using them. Let the local people
tell you how they want to develop their system and suggest
some alternatives if they are pursuing the wrong direction.
Many of them have never heard of a performance bond. I feel
with good, sound protections, with reasonableness and variances
where necessary, as we've discussed today with relation to
cover material and other aspects in the flood plan, the system
will work.
We feel in Minnesota we've had a few breaks but I believe
some of us have to make them. I'd like to just indicate to
you that we have developed a solid waste management manual
which was supplied at these regional meetings to local
officials, county, operators and so on, identifying our solid
waste program, the landfill concept and how air quality relates
to the program. It also contains dump closing procedures and
all the regulations that involve the local community. In the
development of a solid waste system, we have a 16-page document
of one of our counties which identifies the total concept of
collection, transportation and ultimate disposal. It's a
feasible operation and it's functioning. Lastly, yesterday we
just saw the list, the six-county operation in the Duluth-
Superior area developed by a consultant, which relates to not only
the two landfill concepts but also we identify a Class 2 and
3 which is relinquishing let's say a little bit of the landfill
principles on daily cover.
But the program which will be implemented, let's say,
within the next year constitutes the reduction of 176 open
dumps to 35 sophisticated land disposal systems.
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QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION
Don McClenahan: Mr. Forsberg mentioned that in developing
his staff he considered the use of and the need for engineers
and hydrogeologists and geologists and so on, and I'm wondering
if he considered adding to his staff an experienced sanitary
landfill operator?
Floyd Forsberg: I think it's a feasible step to pursue,
if you can get a landfill operator to join a staff for the
kind of money the State is going to pay him.
Samuel Johnson: Instead of working with politicians, we
found it was much better to turn a program over to the LRC and
let them push it. The last thing I want to do as a State
director is get involved with a bunch of politicians. This
mistake was made a couple of years ago in one of our other
programs, and the politicians know who the man is now to
contact and they contact him constantly. He has every politician
in the State on his back.
Floyd Forsberg: Maybe he's had some bad experiences. But
I feel our program, our accelerated program, is due to the
association we've had with the State legislature. Without that
education on that particular level I don't think we would have
ever got it. We've also had tremendous support from the Haulers
Association, which has actually lobbyed with us along with
municipalities.
Kenneth Lustig: In answer to your question, the Department
of Environmental Protection and Health in the State of Idaho has
a fulltime landfill operator who travels around to all our
landfills and works with the operators, goes through a training
program. He used to run the landfills. He's on our staff
fulltime.
Floyd Forsberg: The regional schools we have, our staff
doesn't put on the entire program. We have landfill operators
make their presentations. The county officials, the people
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who are in the business, they make the presentations to the
groups, so they're involved with our program.
Kenneth Lustig: We found the best way is to send the
operator to the fill to work with the operator there, because if
you bring them to a central location the guy says, "That's
nice but that's not my operation."
Floyd Forsberg: You mean an actual demonstration?
Kenneth Lustig: Yes, we send our man there to actually
work on his fills.
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OBJECTIVES OF EPA MODEL SANITARY LANDFILL DEMONSTRATIONS
Jack DeMarco*
I am sure that most everyone here will support the viewpoint
that sanitary landfills can be good neighbors. Yet, as has
already been pointed out, there still is a great deal of adverse
public reaction to initiating them in communities across the
Nation.
One reason is the black box syndrome that always catches
hold of many new-found environmentalists. The increasing call
for resource recovery in lieu of sanitary landfill facilities
is not unusual to many of us. However, the reality of resource
recovery must be kept in its true perspective. We support the
move toward resource recovery, but today's problems must be
met with today's technology. In my opinion, resource recovery
cannot currently be classified as today's technology in enough
real life situations to conscientiously put an end to technology,
such as sanitary landfills.
But we cannot lay the blame entirely on the uninformed
viewpoint that resource recovery is here as a panacea for all
of our solid waste problems. Allowing the poor land disposal
operations to become the image that the public associates with
all public, as well as private, operations hasn't helped us any.
The public still doesn't believe that an outstanding job can be
done in land disposing of solid wastes. Floyd's statistics
on the miserable state of implementation of known technology
are too common.
Challenge yourself to think of how many really outstanding
sanitary landfills that you have seen. Are most of the land
disposal sites that you have seen well operated? Was there an
efficient management information system so that the true costs
of the facility could be established? Was the operation on a
self-financing basis? Could you take environmentalist groups
*Deputy Director, Processing and Disposal Division, Office of
Solid Waste Management Programs, U. S. Environmental Protection
Agency (at time of presentation)
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to it without notice? Unfortunately, I think that most of
the answers to these questions will be negative.
I wish I could say that we have all the solutions in our
model sanitary landfill demonstration projects, but unfortu-
nately, we do not. However, what I hope we have is the start
of a messenger system that can show people what they can expect
and should demand in their community instead of their proverbial
town dumpl On the selfish side, we hope to see some full-scale
operations started and continued correctly so that data
collected from them can be used to allay fears that "time bombs"
are being built that will cause irreversible damage.
It always seems to be in order to describe what the
Demonstration Grant Projects are not. Very briefly, they are not
construction grant projects designed to put up as many facilities
as can be accomplished with a massive dose of Federal dollars
and some token amounts of local funds.
If you have questions about my discussion of the objectives
of our Model Sanitary Landfill Demonstrations after I'm finished,
I hope it will not be relative to whether they are construction
grants or not, or even whether they are trial cases for a future
construction grant program. The answer on both counts is nol
So what then are we up to with our Model Sanitary Landfill
Demonstration Projects?
Let me first give you a thumbnail sketch of a drastic
change we have taken in this program. Most simply stated,
where we once placed emphasis on totally new and innovative
systems when awarding grants, we have now shifted our accent
toward maximizing the current tools that, unfortunately, are
not being used nearly as widespread as they should be. Thus,
the objectives of our model sanitary landfill program are to
demonstrate:
1. That in different geographical areas of the Nation
that a sanitary landfill, in the true sense of the word, can be
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an environmentally acceptable procedure that enhances rather
than degrades the area used.
2. Communities and regions that are willing to make up
their minds to initiate a sanitary landfill program can close
down and will close down any non-acceptable operations in the
vicinity. This is the practical act of providing an
environmentally acceptable solid waste management facility
and then enforcing the use of that facility or one that operates
by the same high standards.
3. How to use sound financing mechanisms and efficient
management techniques at sanitary landfills.
We expect a number of things from these model sanitary
landfill grants, above and beyond a visual show-and-tell type
facility that is there only because Uncle Buck has put up some
money. As I stated before, it is not our purpose to initiate a
sub rosa construction grant program. We have limited the
Federal dollar values to $250,000 per grant and, in all
cases, final awards were well below that amount. We have
projects located at Ventura, California, Clark County, Arkansas,
and Warren County, Pennsylvania; they will all be starting
around January 1973.
We wish to demonstrate how with seed money a sanitary
landfill program can sprout and grow into a continuous model
operation that is a favorable asset to its location.
We expect that the projects will be self-financing and
that the full cost of the system will be kept account of and
distributed equitably back to the users of the system. Thus,
the mechanism to charge the full cost, including capital
costs, to the users of the system is an item that must be
initiated at the start of operations. The mechanism must also
include a flexibility for making changes when they are necessary.
The amount of Federal money must be counted in as a cost to the
operation and fee assessments must be made accordingly.
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We require a cessation of open burning at disposal sites
within the applicant's jurisdiction within 15 calendar days of
grant award. Along with this stringent requirement, we require
a schedule for the elimination of open dumps that coincides
with the availability of acceptable disposal facilities.
We expect that enforcement of applicable solid waste
management rules, regulations, and standards by the appropriate
authority will be an integral part of our Model Sanitary
Landfill demonstrations. Thus, we require a commitment from
the State authority that it will enforce its rules and regu-
lations in the applicant's jurisdiction.
We further require that the grantee provide legally
established standards or rules and regulations that comply
with OSWMP recommended guidelines and practices and that they
be applicable throughout the grantee's jurisdiction.
We expect the project to be consistent with the State
solid waste management planning effort and be based on an
acceptable local or regional solid waste management plan for
the applicant's jurisdiction.
We also require that our applicants have or be able to get
legal authority to fully implement a solid waste management
system, including the ability to operate, enforce, finance,
or perform other necessary actions.
On each of the Model Sanitary Landfill demonstration
projects, our financial support has been limited to capital
expenditures, overall management and documentation of the
techniques used, design, data collection, developing public
relations materials, and training of personnel at the facility.
We have attempted to refrain from granting money for personnel
who are a normal part of the operation on an everyday basis.
Basically, we are trying to minimize any dependency on Federal
monies.
I might add that in addition to providing a model sanitary
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landfill operation for particular locations, there are other
objectives to each of the grants awarded to date.
One project, for instance, will provide an accounting/
management information system that will be used throughout
the regional area. The system will be developed with the
concept of widespread applicability so that others might
tailor it slightly for their specific part of the country. A
user manual for the system will also be developed.
All of our grantees will document the process they used to
arrive at equitable user fees so that others may benefit from
the experience gained at their model operation. Documentation
of actions, such as special handling techniques used in the
disposal of hazardous wastes on one hand to the very different
documentation of the intricacies of how operational regional
systems were formed, is also an output.
Very frankly, we don't want to show what a community can
do that is trying to cut every corner it can to provide the
most economic practice regardless of the environmental conse-
quences. We are trying to reach that Utopia that operations
research analysts call optimization of the costs with the
benefits to be derived. As an engineer, hopefully living in
the world of reality, I know we will never fully optimize our
environmental/economic factors. But I assure you that we in the
Environmental Protection Agency will push for environmental
quality and maintain a rational perspective while doing so.
It has been personally rewarding to be able to exchange
viewpoints with such a diverse group. I don't believe that the
mix of participants could have been better selected.
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DEVELOPING REGIONAL LAND DISPOSAL PROGRAMS
Don Berman*
We have heard the philosophy expounded that our only
salvation, at least with regard to the solid wastes problem, is
to recycle. We have been advised that unless we put paper back
as paper, cans back as cans, and bottles back as bottles, we
will soon drown in our own waste.
We are currently entering into a time period when we are
beginning to realize that in a country as big as ours and in a
society as diverse as ours, that there are many separate,
distinct, and often completely opposing public, private,
governmental, and environmental interests involved in solving
environmental problems.
In the case of Allegheny County, some of the basic data
around which our solid waste program was built includes the
fact that in the 730-square-mile county, over 1,600,000 people
are governed by 129 separate municipal bodies, each of which has
in the past operated its own solid waste system.
In addition, while county officials have been wrestling with
the development of a regional solid waste program for almost
four decades, it has only been within the past few years that
a public hue and cry about the need for such a system has been
raised. This lack of popular support has spelled defeat for all
previous attempts to implement a workable program.
In order to take the first step, it was essential that an
easily implementable, relatively low-cost program be initiated.
In 1968 the Commissioners of Allegheny County appointed a
citizen's Solid Waste Advisory Committee. Its members included
representatives of universities, local government, refuse
collectors and citizen's groups. County personnel acted as
their staff.
•Director, Department of Waste Systems Management, Allegheny
County Regulatory Authority, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
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In April 1969, the committee presented its report to the
Board and to a gathering of all the representatives of all
129 municipalities in the county.
Among the factors considered in the development of the report
were the present practices and future needs of all municipalities
in the county and the interests of local municipal governments,
which had previously deterred the adoption of a countywide
plan.
The report was approved by the Board and readily accepted
by those in attendance. This action, coupled with the recently
voiced concern over rising costs, led to the subsequent develop-
ment of a specific program for solid waste management in
Allegheny County. The report was general in nature and gave
no specifics for a program. In essence, it said, "Let's get
going." Between theory and science, on the one hand, and hard
economics and municipal interests on the other, we believe we
have developed a practical solid waste management plan. It
includes the following general points:
1. Storage and collection are to remain the responsibility
of individual local municipal governments.
2. Transportation shall be a combined municipal/county
effort.
3. Final disposal is to be the responsibility of the
county.
The specifics of the plan include: The establishment of 10
collection districts, the use of existing privately owned
landfills to serve six of these districts, the construction by
the county of transfer stations to service the seventh, eighth,
and ninth districts, the purchase of an existing transfer
station to serve the tenth district, and the purchase by the
county of land reserves in those districts served only by the
privately owned landfills.
Members of the original Solid Waste Advisory Committee
have continued to lend their assistance in the implementation
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of the plan. A question and answer booklet was printed and
distributed and a slide show was prepared. Meetings were held
with elected officials in every area of the county. A few
speaking requests were received and they were promptly honored.
I must point out that our plan, which for the present
utilizes only sanitary landfills and transfer stations and
which has been relatively well accepted, may be quite unacceptable
in other areas of the country.
This element of acceptability gives rise to the first "don't"
principle which I believe should be used in gaining public
acceptance of any regional solid waste management plan recommend-
ing the use of landfills. "Don't propose landfilling for
disposal purposes only."
Once this basic premise was reached, the premise that
sanitary landfills and transfer stations were to be integral
parts of our program, the next element to be investigated was
where the fills and the transfer stations were to he located.
Here again, we could have used the latest sophisticated
computer equipment and developed an ultra-modern model to end all
models. The end result of that type of approach would have been
the selection of specific sites which, in theory, would have
given us the best possible solution and the one which would
probably have led to the least possible dollar cost. This
train of thought leads to the second "don't" principle which
we utilized. "Don't try to find the single best theoretical
answer."
In the county, this principle is evidenced by the fact
that we have incorporated as an integral part of the plan, all
of the privately owned landfills which can receive operating
permits from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental
Resources and the County Health Department. We have included
these landfills regardless of their location within the county.
In fact, the six landfill districts were established around
existing landfills and one of the transfer districts was
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established around the existing transfer station.
Our approach, in essence, is that where there are properly
permitted solid waste facilities in existence, use them. Where
there are none in close proximity to a given municipality or
group of municipalities, build transfer stations to help
decrease the total cost of the solid waste management program
and use the existing landfills as the disposal sites.
The third element of our program involves the unknowns of
future efforts in the total solid waste field. Our "don't"
principle here acknowledges the fact that we are not omniscient.
"Don't establish a plan that is completely inflexible."
To accommodate this philosophy, we are planning on purchasing
land reserves for future use as sanitary landfills or for some
other facility or type of operation as that particular operation
may prove to be feasible, both technically and financially. We
will not look for such sites in other than stripped areas.
We are presently in the process of finding sites for both
the transfer stations and the land reserves. I believe that
part of our favorable reception has been based on the fact
that part of our favorable reception has been based on the
fact that we have developed a method of proceeding which did
not promise pie in the sky but was one which could be discussed
in a relatively rational manner.
The first step in our hunt for sites involved meeting with
a site selection committee composed of local elected officials
and responsible people in the community, as selected by those
officials, to ask them for assistance in the site selection
process. For that specific purpose we developed a procedure
which includes the following elements:
1. The establishment of site criteria by the county;
2. Designation of specific areas by the local site
selection committee, using the site criteria developed by the
county;
3. Evaluation by the county of the sites so designated;
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4. A review of this evaluation by the site selection
committee;
5. Pre-final selection of more than one site made jointly
by the county and the site selection committee.
(I might add, that in all of these steps pertinent
information was given by the site selection committee to local
newspapers for publication.)
After the pre-final selection we went to the public and
made a complete disclosure of all the information which we had
developed. We attended regularly scheduled public meetings
with responsible environmental groups or special meetings
called by local officials in their particular municipalities.
We met with independent collectors and went to any number
of closed meetings with small groups of interested citizens,
normally those people who lived in the immediate area of the
proposed facility. We succeeded, however, in avoiding public
hearings called by irate environmentalists simply to lash out at
our efforts.
We found that visual aids were appropriate for use at these
meetings and developed two basic pieces of data for that
purpose. The first was a map of the area showing the general
location of proposed sites and the second was our evaluation
chart which included the elements of road access, road
restrictions, land ownership, utilities, zoning, estimated
cost, nearness to homes, topography, size, relation to centroid,
future plans and traffic. We were not looking for a specific,
numbered rating but rather for general trends leading to a
selection of the type of site which would fit our purpose.
As a result of all these steps, and because we had acted
responsibly with local officials and with the environmental
groups, we were able to make a final selection for the first
transfer station site to be built by the county. This kind of
an approach will be used in setting other transfer station sites
and land reserves. The only difference will be that the
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evaluation for land reserves will also include the elements of
size and life expectancy, reclamation and restoration, geology,
and the availability of suitable cover material.
Once the site has been established and the facility
built, and we are under construction now with the first transfer
station, the one prime element which I believe will be essential
in the continuing success of our program is the use of the
facility as a tour area for educational purposes. This does
two things: (1) It brings the actual operation into public
view, thus allowing the citizen to see what he is responsible
for; (2) just as important, it keeps the operator on his toes.
We have also attempted to establish a credibility rating with
the public by giving newspaper interviews, appearing on radio
and television programs, and in general, spending as much time
talking to interested groups as we possibly can. I must admit,
however, that solid waste on the local level cannot compete with
the late movie or the F.B.I, or Archie Bunker. In fact, my
first two appearances were on a local T.V. program at 2 a.m.
live and 8:30 Sunday night on radio.
The one question I will answer before it is asked is,
"How successful have you been?"
If you were to measure the progress made over the year
and a half that we have been in existence, you would say that
the selection of the site for only one transfer station and the
start of construction leave much to be desired. However, if
you take into account the 36 years of futility, the multitude
of local governments, the political ramifications resulting
from the local governmental hodgepodge, and the recently
awakened ecological movement, I believe we have at least gotten
an extremely strong foothold.
The motto of our department is, "Don't be discouraged."
We will implement a solid waste management system, slowly but
inexorably.
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QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION
Howard Christensen: We're embarked on a similar type
program, and I'm interested in what type cooperation you got
from elected officials as far as their making a site selection
within their particular jurisdiction.
Don Herman: "L was amazed, quite frankly, at their
cooperation. In fact, in this one area they came to us and
said, "Please help us. We've got a problem." Now that doesn't
mean we're going to get that kind of cooperation from everybody.
In fact, we were kicked out of one area because the local
officials would not back us up. We're going back into that area
because I know now that their planning group is going to
recommend that they join the county system. This is why it's
going slowly but inexorably—we are getting cooperation from
local officials. It's like pulling teeth, but we're getting it.
Don McClenahan: You spoke about acquiring an existing
transfer station. Is that by eminent domain or—
Don Berman: No. We hope to purchase it at a reasonably
fair price. I think in our report we said something like
$200,000 but the owner says a million. So somewhere in there.
This happens to be a transfer station that's built on Pittsburgh-
owned property. The contract is up next year. It may be
renewed. But there are many things working towards the county
getting into only the management phase.
One comment I want to stay out of the garbage business.
I don't think government has any place in the business. All
of my work will be put out on contract except for the first
transfer station which I promised I would run just to prove to
the people it can be done right. By the way, I shouldn't
say this, but it's in a park.
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THE MARC LANDFILL PROJECT
Michael Lawlor*
I'd like to start by reading to you an answer John T.
Connor, former Secretary of Commerce under Lyndon Johnson
and presently the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of
Allied Chemical, gave to an interviewer from Nation's Business,
He was asked, "What lessons have you learned from your
career in both business and government?"
His answer was as follows: "For one, that it is essential
for the good of the country that they work more closely together.
I don't think we can accomplish our national objectives or meet
our national goals without this kind of cooperation and under-
standing. It is very difficult to bring this about. In our
system, for political reasons, business and government are
often political adversaries. But I think men of good will on
both sides will have to work toward a closer partnership.
Otherwise, our system just isn't going to work."
It's a genuine pleasure for me to talk with you today
about what can be accomplished when the public and private
sectors of society join forces in the solid waste industry.
There's probably no better example of that than right here
where the country's best sanitary landfill project is in full
and successful swing. Let me say right here that Browning-
Ferris Industries, as the contractor, is delighted to be a
part of that project.
Briefly, I might give you a bit of history behind the
landfill project. The Mid-America Regional Council had studied
the possibility of a model demonstration sanitary landfill for
some time before bids were sought for the operation in the
latter part of 1971. We bid on the project successfully in
the name of our subsidiary, International Disposal Corporation.
As you probably know, much of thG funding has come from the
Environmental Protection Agency on a demonstration grant.
*Vice President of Landfill Operations, Browning-Ferris
Industries, Houston, Texas
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The remainder of the funding has come from the counties and
townships which make up the Mid-America Regional Council and
from the disposal fees received from users of the landfill.
We started operating the landfill on February 14, 1972.
Some of the initial work on the site preparation had been done
before we began operations with a minimum of tonnage. We're now
handling about 750 tons a day, with some days approaching
1,000 tonnage. This is half again as much as previous
estimates had indicated. At that rate, and we certainly see
no let up, the landfill will be completed in another year and a
half or so. This is far earlier than had been anticipated.
That leads me to the area that I consider to be one of the
major factors in making the demonstration project a success.
Call it what you will, public relations or education, but
making the public aware of exactly what the landfill is—
particularly that it is being operated in the best possible
manner--has largely been responsible for its success. In fact,
part of our contract is the idea that B.F.I, is ready and
willing to assist in the public relations area. I suppose
Jerry Stapely, who most of you will meet tomorrow and who
manages our fill, has attended as many meetings as anyone
with the various townships, counties, and at EPA-sponsored
schools, all designed to explain just what we're doing out
there in what used to be known as Rattlebone Hollow.
Has that effort paid off? Let me give you one example.
Several weeks ago, we went out to the site about 6:30 one
evening. On one area that's already been finished there were
about 20 youngsters playing football. It wasn't too good for
the grass, since the area had just been seeded but it sure
did warm our hearts. There's no question that those 20 kids had
really accepted the landfill project with a passion.
But can the public and private sectors team up successfully
in other areas? We certainly think so. We believe we can use
the MARC project as a vehicle to join with many other cities
or areas in a public-private partnership. I think the cities
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will find that we, as the private partner, can do some things
much better because we have flexibility. We can bring in
additional manpower if we need it, we can get additional
equipment if we need it. This flexibility is not always
available to the cities immediately or to regional groups such
as MARC. We can join with them in the search for new sanitary
landfill sites which are best suited for their particular
needs. We can even buy the real estate if there is a funding
problem.
This cooperative effort will work, and it will work even in
the absence of massive Federal financial aid. Take Houston, for
example. We buy the land and we run a sanitary landfill
operation for the city. We do it for pretty much the same
price as we do here in Kansas City, and we also try to operate
it as a model sanitary landfill. Houston, by the way, is of a
much larger scale in terms of tonnage and volume, thus accounting
for the pricing similarity despite our additional land cost.
Such a partnership, we feel, is both practical and economical,
even for a medium-size town or community. If a city has between
five and six hundred tons of solid waste per day, we can come in
and operate a model sanitary landfill operation at a reasonable
cost, comparable to what we have in Kansas City. In Kansas City,
of course, we don't have a real estate cost, which saves some
money as far as Browning-Ferris is concerned. What I'm saying
is that you don't need the regional concept if the volume and
tonnage are there.
A fair-size city can handle a model project. I'm certainly
not belittling the regional concept because we think it is an
ideal approach where volume and tonnage are distributed over
a wide area in many townships or counties.
When I say working relationship, I mean just that. It's
been a pleasure to work with the Mid-America Regional Council
because: (1) they are easy to work with; (2) they have
flexibility; (3) they have a set of standards which we under-
stand and comply with. At first glance, the standards seemed
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tough and nearly impossible. But when we sat down and studied
them and started putting them into practice we found that they
were more than just good standards, they were excellent. We
have, in fact, used their standards and a copy of our contract
to work out other agreements with private individuals and
proposed these to other cities, saying we'd be happy to bid
on such specifications. Even if we lose bids on such
specifications, we feel whoever gets the contract, as long as
they live up to the specificaitons will have to do a good job.
As for the day-to-day relationship between B.F.I, and
MAFC, let me give you an example of what I mean by flexibility.
A few weeks ago we got a task force from B.F.I, that went on a
week-long tour of many of our sanitary landfill operations.
We wanted Jerry Stapley to go with us on this tour. Gerald
Neeley and Nick Artz quickly agreed. There was none of this
"O.K., you guys got the contract so Jerry's going to stay here
at the site." He soes it because he wants to.
We have a difference of opinion with MARC occasionally,
but they're usually minor. For example, in the beginning, we
felt that compactors would have given us a little more density
than bulldozers. But the specifications called for bulldozers,
and they're doing a good job. Some differences are inevitable,
but in the long run they probably contribute to a better
operation. We at B.F.I, simply do not know of a better operation.
Using 20-20 hindsight, we can see only one major change
we would recommend. The site should have been larger so it
would have lasted longer. But I'm not sure anyone could have
anticipated what has happened. Based on 600 tons a day, this
landfill would have lasted three and a half years. Nobody
could foresee that Kansas City, Missouri, would shut down
several of its dumps to come across the river into Kansas City,
Kansas, with its waste. But that happened, and we certainly
are not complaining; neither is the EPA. Shutting down the
dumps is a nice shot in the arm for EPA's Mission 5,000—a program
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designed to close down all the dumps in this country.
In essence, what happened is part and parcel of a model
sanitary landfill operation. We had an operation that clearly
disputed any alternative available in the Mid-America region—in
this case open dumps, a poor alternative at best. So the
region gets a park a year and a half earlier than had been
anticipated. What I'm saying is, the end result of shorter
life expectancy for the site is fine. We just should have
anticipated it in our earlier planning.
What happened here has convinced us that you can anticipate
a similar occurrence anywhere that a model landfill is a clear
alternative to open dumps. We feel that under a similar set of
circumstances that any city or any region could expect to close
its dumps down within six months or a year after opening a
model sanitary landfill. Public pressure, if nothing else,
would compel closing the dumps with a top flight landfill
operation as an alternative.
There is a parallel here with the project that I was
associated with in Washington, D. C. In fact, that project was
the first truly model sanitary landfill and the MARC project,
the first regional model landfill, is based on the requirements
by HEW for Kenilworth. For 30 years there had been an open
burning dump off Kenilworth Avenue, just three miles from the
Capitol Building. It wasn't until there was a tragedy there
that public pressure mounted to do something about the dump.
So HEW laid out the specifications for the first model
sanitary landfill.
Well, just like Fannie Brice once said, she had been rich
and she had been poor, "Believe me, rich is better." Let me
say that starting a model landfill from scratch is much better
than trying to convert a 30-year-old burning dump into one.
Kenilworth was just about 30 times harder than Rattlebone Hollow.
If any one of you has ever been involved with a burning dump you
may recall that there's a lot more to putting out fire than
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just squirting water on it. At Kenilworth we had to dig down as
deep as 35 feet to bring the fires to the surface where they
could be put out. Then we had to put it all back in the ground
and compact it. So believe me, starting with a virgin site is
better.
There's another parallel between Kansas City and Washington.
If you have public support for landfill operations—I'm told
just last month or so Mayor Wheeler had a picnic out on the
landfill site and that press coverage for that event helped
pass an 8.4 million dollar bond election. That was done once in
Washington, too, and it also helped generate public support. It
really does work. People get to see on their television screens
that a good sanitary landfill operation looks good and, as a
result, their fears are removed and they support it.
That brings me to a final point regarding cooperation
between the public and private sector, that partnership we
have been talking about.
We have learned that we at B.F.I, can work with the public
sector on a good contract and still run a model operation while
making a profit. We can run a good operation that they will
be proud of and we can do it without undue friction. It is as
important for us, the private sector, to make the public sector
look good in their decisions as it is for them to work with us.
But, then, that is just exactly what a partnership is all about.
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QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION
Samuel Johnson: From all the sounds that have come from
the panel up there it sounds like the private sector is the
virgin in this thing. The private sector, traditionally in
this country, has taken the cream and left the skim milk to
the public. There are areas where the private sector can do a
better job than possibly the public can do, but there are
areas where their record is horrendously poor.
They have taken the cities and the contracts in the cities
and left the doughnuts surrounding the city that are unincorporated,
primarily unhandled. And if they did take the doughnuts, they
left the county, the rural unhandled.
William McNulty: I've talked in a few places, primarily
back home in Connecticut. Where I come from, we've got a lot
of rotten messes. And the rotten messes are all operated by the
politicians and the protection of these politicians is like
Parkinson's Law, it just spreads out to the time allotted.
So I've heard all I want to hear from anybody from the
public sector talking about the private sector. It takes
somebody who's real good and sharp in the private sector to
get this thing moving. I've seen more dumps since I've been a
kid this big operated by cities, towns and villages and it
takes somebody like some of the people we're involved with to
get them to work.
Don Berman: Can I make one comment? This was something
that I wasn't there as a first party but I heard. It was in
court. An elderly landfill operator in Allegheny County was
hauled into court by the DER Pennsylvania Department of
Environmental Resources, and the County Health Department. And
he had been operating a dump as he operated a dump for about
30 years. He finally got hauled into court after he'd been fined
and chastised and was told he had to shape up or ship out.
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He finally turned to the judge and he said, "Judge, how come for
30 years I've been doing it this way and all of a sudden I'm
a ?"
I think we've done a lot of things wrong in the past. I
think the public sector, the private sector, all government
levels from Uncle Sam on down, have got to realize that what
we did before we did because we didn't really care what happened
to the waste. Now we do care. It's going to have to be a
cooperative effort on the part of industry, government,
citizens, the elected officials, everybody, to straighten this
whole mess out.
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THE MILWAUKEE TRANSFER SYSTEM
LAND DISPOSAL PROGRAM
Harold Smith*
What I've been involved with in waste management I was
selected to speak about the Milwaukee Transfer concept because
I had the original management of that program for Waste
Management, Inc.
When I sat in on the initial meeting, I heard an indi-
vidual at the podium indicate that part of the program here is
to develop a partnership and understanding between the private
and the public sectors. I believe that to say that we will
cooperate is one thing, but I would like to go into the Milwaukee
Transfer program as it developed and as it is now functioning as
an indication of the kind of partnership support we needed from
the city.
The Milwaukee Transfer conversion in the Milwaukee
incinerators developed because of the air pollution standard
requirements set by the Federal government and the State which
indicated to the City of Milwaukee they had to go in to a
twenty-nine million dollar investment to build a new site and
upgrade the two existing sites and to abandon one of them.
At the same time they were running out of landfill within
the municipality and they had long had a kind of controversy
which I think is probably prevalent in the land of the urban
against the suburban. So in an attempt to satisfy the needs of
the suburban people as well as the urban people, they developed
a countywide program of disposal. They selected a contractor
and established a rate. The mayor °f the City of Milwaukee
decided that not enough data had been gathered and had not
been gathered properly by objective people, and withdrew
from the program.
Now, in the City of Milwaukee there is a single journal
company newspaper that bought out the Milwaukee Sentinel so
*General Manager, Waste Management, Inc., Oak Brook, Illinois
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that the public organ that goes to Mr. and Mrs. Jones' house
every night comes from the same editor's desk. He also had a few
problems with the mayor and the mayor, in turn, with the Journal.
So the mayor prevailed and suggested they hire an independent
objective-viewing firm, Black & Veatch of Kansas City to run a
study and develop specifications that would enable private
enterprise to bid.
Black s Veatch pursued the matter, developed specifications
and Waste Management, Inc. turned out to be the lowest bidder.
But in the interim, the Journal selected Waste Management, Inc.
as an adjunct to the mayor, and in an effort to attack him,
the paper started attacking Waste Management, Inc.
This created a number of problems. Number one, councilmen
who are elected by the electorate, by and large suscribers of
the Journal, responded to this publicity and got on the bandwagon.
This generated a lot of noise from City Hall with regard to
our bid.
All we were interested in was the contract, doing the
work, fulfilling the contract, and saving the city money.
As it turned out, our bid would save the City of Milwaukee a
million dollars a year. The council negotiated this thing back
and forth and finally approved the contract on November 19, 1970.
We were to start on January 1st, 1971, and Wisconsin
has snow and ice at that time of year. Also, they did not want
us to interfere with the burning operation, as it was handling
the city's quantity at the time. So we had to go in and store
our packer equipment, separate walls, open up doorways, and
make parking lots without interfering with the city's operation.
We had this to do in 45 days. Luckily, we elected to use
equipment manufactured in Milwaukee and because of the size and
number of pieces of equipment, they were in bed with us at
this time to get this contract in operation.
So as of November 19th, we had a clear shot. Forty-five
days later we had to acquire an entire crew, convert that
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incinerator to our operation, and we had to do this from
December 31st at 5 o'clock to January 4th at 7 o'clock,
at no time interfering with the city.
Now, the Department of Public Works is headed by Mr.
Herb Gash who, in fact, felt private enterprise could save
the city money, and he could not compete with it. And he did
give us support in spite of the Journal's continual harassment
in attacking us and the mayor.
So we acquired our people through advertising and we had to
go in with 31 men who had never worked together before in all
their lives. But they had fulfilled certain functions, one of
which was the driving of semi-tractors. It turned out that
the type of transfer operation we were talking about provided
those people an opportunity to be home every night. And after
they had been over-the-road for some 15 years, they wanted to
come home every night. So we attracted a goodly number of
professional drivers, people who had more than 10 years driving
experience over-the-road. But they had never in all their life
been to a landfill and they had never emptied a garbage truck.
And they heard about garbage truck drivers and they did not
relate to it that at the time we hired them that they were,
in fact, garbage truck drivers.
So we had to go to crane people to be trained as well, who
could be professional on cranes, as it had been in operation
some 16 years. Now the crane is wholly owned by the city, so
the electrician adjusted each crane to the operator's desire.
So we acquired the city crane men, which the Department of
Public Works made available to us by giving those people a
leave of absence. So we amassed our people. We did the conver-
sion contracting with the support of Ohio Equipment. We had
one orientation day with all the equipment people before we
started the operation on the 28th day of December. We brought
them all together and we said we're going to take this thing
over. They were aware of the opposition. And we said, "We're
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going to climb Mount Everest." By golly, we did.
So they came in on January 4th with the newspapers now
predicting that we could not fulfill the contract at a time
when they had given up their regular jobs and they had families
to feed, and that sort of thing. The Journal was running
headlines saying that we wouldn't be able to handle this material
and transfer, that we would fail within two weeks.
So these people came to work and the first day we opened the
door, it just snowed six or seven inches, so the city pulled
all the garbage trucks off and went out on snow plowing trucks.
And this gave me one additional day to train these people.
On the second day we opened the door, came in and we
decided we're going to move the stuff and don't panic, don't
run, make normal motions, and if I end up on the floor with garbage
up to my ears, that's normal. Don't panic.
So they came in and at the same time so did Channel 4,
Channel 6, Channel 13, taking these peoples' picture with their
cameras. You know these are not public speakers, these are
not actors, these are drivers.
So we managed to get through the first day. But the city
brought in 350 tons, which was 130 tons more than that particular
station had ever seen in its lifetime before. With the city's
cooperation, we were able to acquire the city crane men which
we needed to load our packers. With the city's cooperation we
were able to schedule city trucks to the door.
I think that that is an indication of the kind of support
you're talking about, when you're talking about public and
private enterprise combining for a single purpose. They had a
need, we had a need, we offered a lower rate, and a savings of
a million dollars a year to the city, and if they didn't have
the backbone to stand up to various aldermen and councilmen
and the Journal, the chances are good that we could not have
fulfilled the contract we had taken.
And we, at Waste Management, are interested in going
again into a city or town or municipality and working in a
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partnership type arrangement, but we do need more support than
the written document we have on our table saying that you will
provide 10 minutes, no more, no interference to the various
cities.
Now, if we can get this cooperation from the public sector
the privates, I speak of B.F.I, as well, are interested in
providing service and saving money, if we can. Now we're not
going to solve all the problems of the United States. We're
profit oriented people and we think the cities are now becoming
more profit oriented. If we can save you a buck, you use our
service. If we can't, you do it yourself.
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QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION
R. E. Dorer: I'd like to ask the gentleman who talked
about Allegheny County, do you run into zoning, use permits,
and public hearings when you go to get these sites?
Don Berman: Yes, we do, which is one of the reasons we
work with local elected officials. They know what their zoning
is and they know what their use permit is, and they know what
their restrictions are on the county moving in. You see, one of
the problems we face in the county is that we can build a solid
waste facility but we can't force anybody to use it. That's one
of the quirks of the law, so I have to have their cooperation.
That's why we work with them in getting the use permit.
Now, one of the items that I mentioned was zoning. If an
area is zoned for single-family residences, I'd just as soon stay
out of it unless the local people say to me this might not be a
bad place to go. I'll make a selection but they give me the
clue.
R. E. Dorer: Doesn't it have to go to public hearing,
though? That's what I'm saying. If you change zoning or use
permit it has to go to public hearing.
Don Berman: Yes.
R. E. Dorer: How successful are you at public hearings?
Don Berman: I've been successful, and I've been unsuccess-
ful. I've had the skin ripped off my back, and I've had a little
cooperation from the local officials. It depends on the particular
area. That's why we go through all five or six steps, to try
to get to the point at the public hearing where I know I'm
going to have friends in the audience who will take my side.
It's a give and take thing. That's why there's no single
answer.
Cecil Iglehart: Mr. Smith, I'd like to direct this question
to you. At six months after your operation, and you've proved
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yourself successful, did you ever get any good publicity in
the newspaper?
Harold Smith: Actually, from the Journal we were never
necessarily attacked directly as Waste Management, Inc. It
was always a direct attack on the political entities, such as the
mayor's office and their chosen contractor. At no point were
they able to attack our operation. Our operational standards
are as good as the city expected, in fact, twice as good.
We're quite happy with it. And the Journal, the only kind of
condescension the Journal gives you in regard to good publicity
is to not mention your name.
Dotson Luton: About this private and public sector thing,
generally the private people will have to be better businessmen.
They have to be. They're out to make a living. They have to
make a profit or they won't do it. The public doesn't have to
have this incentive. On the other hand, some of our counties
can't get private people to go in because it's too sparsely
populated. They can't go in and make a living so the county has
to do it. And they can do a good job. We don't have any real
argument with, you know, who handles it.
Jerry Bond: I don't have a question necessarily, I'm
just a very small operator in a very small place. A direct
observation. This whole problem is big enough for all of us.
I really don't see that we need to be bloodying one another's
nose about it. I have a hunch it will keep us all busy to try
to get it fixed.
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PANEL D
NEW APPROACHES TO LAND DISPOSAL
MODERATOR: Eugene Wingerter*
*Executive Director, National Solid Wastes Management Association
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LANDFILLING OP MILLED REFUSE
Dr. Robert Ham*
Synopsis
Dr. Ham prefaced his slide presentation by stating that
he did not intend to discuss the milled refuse project he is
conducting at Madison, Wisconsin, because the work had
already been adequately reported on in various media. He
then outlined several areas that he believed needed to be
studied:
1. Developing guidelines and specifications to aid in
operating and evaluating a milled refuse landfill;
2. Achieving a better understanding of decomposition
processes with the objective of controlling the type and
rate of decomposition in an optimal fashion for each site;
3. Relating the fineness of the grind, possibly by
component, to the characteristics of the milled refuse in
the landfill;
4. Gaining additional information on aged milled
refuse in a landfill;
5. Obtaining documentation on successes and failures
with relation to differing refuse compositions and climatic
conditions.
In the balance of his presentation, Dr. Ham showed slides
depicting equipment, procedures, topographies, and physical
appearance of some of the 20 milled refuse sites he had
visited in England, France, Scotland, and West Germany.
*Associate Professor, University of Wisconsin
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QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION
John Ruf: I was interested in your comments on the
fire in Germany. I was Project Officer of the Gainesville
Composting Plant for a few years.
Near the end of the plant we by-passed the digesters and
landfilled the material, so in effect we had a milled refuse
disposal system. And we did have fires at. Gainesville with
the milled refuse for about a week. We also had leachate
problems with the stored milled refuse. But the fires were
in windrows and they were quite notorious and helped close
the plant at Gainesville.
Francis Fyles: I believe this milled refuse—you still
have to take under consideration the leachate and the under-
ground water problem. If there's no cover, there's little
chance of control of that. So this is the part that I think
should be considered the most in looking at it, because does
it produce leachate in quantity, are there other methods of
control? Maybe it answers its own problems the way it behaves.
Robert Ham: I'd like to also react to John's comment.
In a compost pile where you are purposely aerating, you
certainly are not providing compaction and where you have a
fairly steep incline, I completely agree, the stuff is going
to burn. Our results are based on level, relatively compact
fills. I think there is a big difference.
As far as the leachate question, we have done a lot of
work on this leachate question and, as I said before, our
data pretty well indicates that the leachate problem will
be there, whether you cover or not. And the function of
cover will be to regulate when leachate comes and the
amount that you're going to get. But it will not mean that
you will not necessarily have leachate.
This is a matter of engineering. If you are engineering
a site so that the pulse of leachate is going to be a detriment
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tc the site, then I would either not go to the milling route
or I would cover it. I would have a very steep contour to
make sure that I had maximum run-off. If, on the other hand,
we're going to accept the same amount of leachate we would
get accumulatively with the regular sanitary landfill, then
I see no problem with milling refuse and not covering it. And
we do have data to back this up.
Kenneth Lustig: Doctor Ham, have there been any com-
parative studies on the state of decomposition of waste xn
landfills, contemporary landfills, and milled waste? In other
words, what is the state of decomposition in a landfill after
20 years as compared to milled waste?
Robert Ham: That's a very good question and this is the
kind of documentation we're still trying to provide. Remember
that the results that I'm quoting are really obtained at
Madison and under fairly rigid conditions which will not
necessarily simulate what you have elsewhere in the country
with different refuse depths and so forth. And this makes a
big difference.
Under Madison conditions and with four to six-foot
deep cells, where we have unprocessed covered and milled
uncovered, side by side, we're finding that the milled
material will decompose more quickly and it will approach a
more inert form with time much more quickly than will the
unprocessed refuse.
As far as what would happen after 20 years and so forth,
this is exactly why I felt we had to go to Europe, because we
just don't have that kind of documentation here. I think that
the European experience indicates that this material will
decompose much more quickly.
There have been unprocessed refuse sites excavated not
too far from some of the sites that we showed in the slides
and I think there they found that they could still read
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newspapers and so forth. So I do think that with milling
you do get more rapid decomposition and this will change the
character of the refuse more quickly and certainly more
uniformly. That much is for sure.
Angus MacPhee: Are you familiar with the Borg project in
Oregon where the material was mixed into the soil? There is
also one coming up in Western Montana, but that is the whole
thrust of the thing, to put the milled refuse on some of
the soils to break them up and retain water.
Robert Ham: The comment was that there are several
places in the country that are now putting milled refuse on
the land in fairly thin layers and either discing it in or
not discing it into the soil, the idea being to incorporate
it into the soil and increase the organic content.
My comment on that is, this is being done. We saw it.
That's the reason I showed it in the slides. It is being
done successfully in other parts of the world.
My feeling is that the long-term implications of milling
are to do exactly that, to provide some method of recycling
material back on the land or even more long term to provide
and enhance its capability for recycling. I do not think that
the milling project per se is that important as far as landfill
is concerned, and maybe 30 years from now it's going to be
more important from the recycling capability.
Donald Andres: I was going to ask the same question I
asked Bob. The EPA has finally come out with some statements
here, Bob, and they didn't have the data. They suggested I
ask you this morning. That is, the maggots present on incoming
solid wastes, it says here the milling process kills nearly a
hundred percent. If I was reading a toothpaste ad I would
suggest that probably is greater than 70 percent, but in an
engineering point of view, how near are we to 100 percent?
Are we up around 98, 99, 92, or what?
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Robert Ham: I'm not competent in the entomology portion
of the project, so this is part of the project we farmed out
or subcontracted to entomologists who are in this part of the
State.
I'll simply cite their conclusions. On two occasions
they took maggots that they bred in the laboratories, put
them in known quantity on refuse as it was going up the
feed conveyor into the mill. Then they took the same
material, put it in plastic bags and brought it into the
lab where some poor guy, I suppose, had to sit there and
count these darn things. And then they took fractions of it
and subjected it to laboratory conditions where they knew
that if there were viable maggots present they would breed
and reproduce and they could count flies.
And their conclusions, which came out in writing under
their name, was that in one case out of 5,000 maggots none
survived, that they could find. And in another case, out of
10,000 maggots, approximately 80 survived. Their conclusion
was that we have well over 99 percent mortality. These are
the only studies of that kind that I know about. I'd sure
be interested in further substantiation or nonsubstantiation
of those figures, because I think they're very interesting.
Kenneth Goldbach: Most of the slides you've shown this
morning seem to locate a mill facility in a remote area away
from habitation. We have a county facing a possible suit
before they get theirs built because of the noise associated
with the mill. Have you considered the noise level,
acceptable noise level, and how close can we put a mill to a
residential area?
Robert Ham: I don't know if I'm the proper person to
answer that. My part of the project has been more from the
landfill standpoint. I think I can cite from Madison ex-
perience that the noise problems that they have had have
come from the beeper that occurs, that happens when the frontend
loader is put in reverse. The people have complained about the
beeper.
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The noise level inside the facility is there. There's
no question about it. I think that this would be something
that I would be concerned about if I was putting a mill very
close to a residential facilities.
Now in Europe this is being done. I'm sorry if the
slides seemed to indicate that the sites were remote. They
shouldn't have indicated that, because I was rather amazed
that practically every site was very close to people who were
living there, or highways or something like that. 1 think
this is one of the problems in Europe, that you don't have
remote sites. If I had picked a few different slides you
would have seen people filling literally on the back doors
of houses and so forth.
William McNulty: First off, that's no more of a problem
than running any kind of a crusher in a sand and gravel plant.
They don't make any more noise. And the noise—it's because
people don't want it there, period, no matter how much noise
it makes.
Doctor, what I wanted to know is, I've seen them feeding
these plants with a frontend loader. Obviously the guy's
sorting out what he's putting in and there's maybe a fellow
standing alongside the conveyor picking out other stuff that
he doesn't want on it.
Now, I'd like to know, did any of the stuff you saw in
Europe, were they dumping directly on an apron feeder so that
nobody was playing games picking stuff out? In other words,
dumping directly on a feeder and get rid of this extra labor.
Robert Ham: In most cases they would do that, unless
the conveyor was filled. This was the desire, to dump it
directly in the conveyor.
Don McClenahan: This matter of cover versus non-cover.
Is there any trend in this country on the part of our State
regulatory agencies to accept milled refuse in a commercial
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site without cover, excepting the final cover is highly
desirable?
Robert Ham: I've been contacted by many of the States
and I think that the common reaction that I see is one of
interest and concern. They're interested because this may be
a way out.
I don't think that milling will ever replace the sanitary
landfill. It's more expensive. It is simply an alternative
which may be particularly useful on certain sites, depending
on climatic and soil conditions and so forth. Now when we look
at it in that light, the regulatory people understand that
for them to enforce regulations and so forth it may be
difficult to do in certain sites, where cover dirt is not
readily available and stuff like that.
Well, they're interested because in order to promote
sound solid waste management, and this is what we're all
about, this may be a very necessary alternative in certain
sites. So I think that in some cases we are seeing specific
exemptions and so forth being given with the idea being, true,
we don't have all the facts, but we've got enough documentation.
It's a fair bet it will go, so let's open it up and consider
the thing almost experimentally, if you will.
John Ruf: In Gainesville, there were maggot studies
and other vector studies. Through the shredder there was a
tremendous die off of the maggots through the shredder. There
was also a noise study. We had the most considerable noise
problem with the end loaders not with the shredders.
These are unpublished reports on the composting plant at
Gainesville and, also, a doctoral student did his work on the
vectors at the composting plant. His thesis, I assume, can
be obtained from the University of Florida.
Orville Stoddard: It seems to have real good application
for household type refuse, apparently. This amounts to about
50 percent of the solid waste received at some sites. Have you
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had any experience with grinding other types of refuse,
demolition debris, any other type of refuse?
Robert Ham: I think that's a matter of what you are
proposing to do with the milling concept. There are mills
that will grind virtually anything. I have watched a mill
handle a piano. They just dropped the thing right in. And
it's really a matter of powering the mill as such and designing
as such that it will handle that kind of thing.
The biggest mill I know of in operation now is a 90 by
90 inch feed opening. Anything that will pass through that
feed, they'll take it. The only things that you just plain
can't put in any one of these things are hose, wire, that
kind of thing. That's murder to any of them.
Ora Smith: We found that, in general, what happens when
you start grinding over-sized bulky items, is that maintenance
costs go up and down time goes up and shredder efficiency
goes down.
Most things can be handled, but when you start dealing
with wastes that are not residential in character you start
having the possibility of getting in goodies like pressed
gas cylinders that will have things in them like hydrogen
maybe, spools of wire. A big spool of steel cable will do a
good job on a grinder, but bulky wastes can be handled.
Walter Erlenbach: Are there qualitative comparisons of
leachate between milled and normally compacted refuse? If so,
what are the results?
Robert Ham: I've threatened to hold a whole week-long
seminar in Madison on just the milling project, of which about
four days would be devoted to leachate.
We've done a lot of work in that area. As far as written
documentation, the only material we have out right now is in
Public Works about one year ago, where there is a series of
three articles. And you'll find in there some of our leachate
data.
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I think this data will indicate to you that the milled
material will decompose more quickly but then it drops off
very quickly to relatively inert production. In other words,
the leachate will come out, but it will have relatively
few contaminates. This is in contrast to an unmilled or
unprocessed refuse landfill where it will take a fair period
of time before it will really produce leachate actively. But
that rate of production will continue over a longer period of
time.
So my feeling is that it's not a matter of whether you
get leachate or how much you get, it's a matter of when it
comes. And this is the real decision with regard to milling.
James Fibbe: I wonder if you would comment on land
usage of milled waste versus regular sanitary landfill.
Robert Ham: From what I've seen and heard about, I
still wouldn't build on it. I think this is first and
foremost.
The people who do have long-term experience, and now we're
talking of the British and the French primarily, will tell you
that the milled refuse landfill will stabilize more quickly
and that there will be less total settlement. And we have
experienced this to be a limited extent in Madison. We just
don't have the experience at this point.
I think no matter whether it's milled or not milled,
whether it's composted or incinerator rejects, or what-have-you,
I still wouldn't build on it. Let's use that kind of thing
for parks and so forth. I wouldn't look at that as an astounding
benefit from milling at all.
Eugene Wingerter: But you would advocate the same land
use patterns as for conventional sanitary landfills.
Robert Ham: Exactly.
Elmer Cleveland: Some people quote figures of up to
30, 40, 50 percent extension of life of land disposal sites
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by using milled waste. Would you like to comment on that?
Robert Ham: I really appreciate that question and this
gives me a chance to knock hard at people who I think inflated
project results and other experience all out of proportion.
I have seen printed literature which said that you get 75
percent volume reduction from milled refuse. This is baloney.
Depending on how you measure it, I don't think that
kind of thing has any bearing at all. Maybe you can get
75 percent reduction by going from the material coming out
of the packer truck and putting it in the milled refuse
landfill. Maybe it'll work under those conditions.
Anytime somebody cites volume reduction I automatically
discount those figures. Instead, let's look at dry density.
That really is what counts, and our studies indicate, and
it's pretty well corroborated by European experience, that
you will get at least 15 percent increased density with
milled refuse, and up to 50 percent. This will depend in
large part on how thinly you lay the material out, how ic_'s
compacted and so forth.
We've done a fair number of density studies which indi-
cate that the vibration as much as the weight causes compaction.
£nd furthermore the more compaction provided, the heavier the
piece of equipment, the more closely will the density of
unprocessed and milled materials come to each other. You get
a much greater percent savings if you have loosely compacted
refuse.
R. E. Dorer: What about gas?
Robert Ham: Gas is produced. No question about it.
And my feeling is that this is an area where the milling
concept offers a very concrete advantage. I don't feel that
strongly about some of the other areas and this density
question is one of them.
What gives us a gas problem is if we have pockets of
gas that build up and are not allowed to freely escape to
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the atmosphere. Now we're going to get gas production
irregardless of whether it's milled or not. If you have a
milled refuse landfill where you have not broken up the
landfill into pockets with daily cover, you now have a good
mechanism for easily transporting of gases away from the
site and, to me, this is an advantage. I tnink you will
have a hard time having lateral migration.
Once the refuse degrades to the point where it looks
like soil, this is something else again. And if you'll note
in the things that I mentioned that need to be done, I
mentioned that we need some more information on the charac-
teristics of aged milled refuse, and that's one of the
things I'd like to look at.
Cameron Friend: You stated that the farmers were using
some of this milled refuse in France, did you? This is
question one, and question two is what type of material were
they using? Was there any value, fertilizer value, out of it?
Robert Ham: I gather that their main rationale was to
put it on vineyards where chey were having an erosion problem.
A vineyard is ideally weedless with a lot of raw exposed soil,
and if this is on any kind of an incline you get run-oEf
which carries away the topsoil. And this seems to be the
main rationale for use in France.
Now there are other parts of the country and othe c perts
in Switzerland and other countries, I should say, where the
material is not being used for that purpose. It does not
have much nutrient value. And I would have to consider it
just as we consider compost as, if anything, a soil conditioner
and not a fertilizer.
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LANDFILLING OF BALED REFUSE
William Faulkner*
Synopsis
Mr. Faulkner said that his firm had spent $3 million over
the past six years on research, development, and demonstration
work to achieve the successful commercial application of high
density baling to dispose of solid waste. Over the past 18
months, the company's plant at St. Paul, Minnesota had baled
and deposited in a landfill over 110,000 tons of residential
and commercial solid waste. The baler used weighs 750,000
pounds and is housed in a building 120'x240'. Every 90
seconds, it can produce a 3,000-pound bale that is consistently
3' wide by 3' high and is normally 4' long, depending on the
consistency of the materials being processed. Nominal
density is 65 pounds per cubic foot. The bales are trucked
to the company's landfill in 25-thousand-ton payloads and are
stacked in tiers. The State has waived its requirement that
cover material be placed daily.
Mr. Faulkner stated that, at its production rate of
800 tons per day, the plant's capital cost is one-sixth that
of a turn-key incinerator facility and one-half that of a
shredding installation; operating costs are one-eighth and
one-half, respectively.
The slide presentation depicted pre-baling handling
procedures, the baling process, loading bales on trucks,
unloading techniques used at the landfill, and the emplace-
ment of bales in tiers. Operations under varying climatic
conditions were illustrated.
*Vice President, American Solid Waste Systems, St. Paul, Minnesota
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EPA BALED LANDFILL DEMONSTRATION
Ora Smith*
We got involved with the City of San Diego back in, oh,
around 1967, back when the Solid Waste Office had its unsolicited
denonstration grants program. We funded a feasibility study
at San Diego to look into the feasibility of installing a
baling plant and operating a bale fill.
And as a result of this study, we funded a demonstration
project to build, operate, and evaluate a baling plant and
the bale fill. The project started in the summer of 1969, I
guess, and the plant became operational with a dedication
ceremony in the late summer of 1971.
Since then the plant has been operating more or less
daily. There have been a lot of the anticipated de-bugging
problems which I'll talk about. So far the total Federal
support to the project has been about $500,000. The City
has contributed an amount in excess of half that much on top.
This covered design, construction, and operation for this
entire period. The capital cost of the facility itself has
been around $350,000.
Daily cover is provided. The bales are generally stacked
up in two-high lifts. The bales, incidentally, are 30 by 40
inches in cross section and the length varies somewhat but it
runs between 72 and 80 inches most of the time. It depends
on the composition of the waste. The thing that determines
the length of the bale is really just how tightly you compact
the stuff in a given number of strokes. The bale densities
have been running right around 60 pounds per cubic foot.
One of the major questions to ask about baling is why
should anybody bother to bale at all? And there are some
obvious reasons why and there are some not so obvious
reasons why. The obvious reason why is that it's difficult to
*At time of presentation. Chief, Mechanical Processing, Office
of Solid Waste Management Programs, U.S. Environmental Pro-
tection Agency.
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get 60 pounds per cubic foot density in a landfill with any
kind of mobile compaction unit, whatever it is, a steel wheel
compactor or a bulldozer. We've heard the number 1200 pounds
per cubic yard come up and everybody sort of breathes deeply
when they hear that, because that's a pretty high landfill
density.
There is also the advantage of the transportation
advantage, which Bill talked about, in that here you have
something that's much denser than you can get in any other
way.
He did show, though, that there's sort of a questionable
advantage when you have truck haul, because it's real easy to
exceed the gross vehicle weights and get yourself a ticket
from the Highway Patrol. It could be an important part in
rail haul, though.
There are also aesthetic advantages in much the same way
that there are with shredded waste. It's just generally
nicer to be around baled solid waste than it is loose solid
waste. There's a reduction in odor problems, in blowing
material problems, and there apparently is also a vector
reduction, but that is something that still needs to be
evaluated in different climatic conditions than San Diego's.
Another advantage is that it doesn't cost very much to
place a bale in a bale fill. It's a fairly simple procedure.
Some of the not so obvious advantages are that we have
suspicions—maybe they're not so obvious disadvantages—we
have some suspicions based on preliminary work that was done
mostly by the Solid Waste Research Laboratories of ORM that
bales are somewhat different in their behavior, in their
decomposing behavior, than either shredded, compacted, or
plain old compacted solid waste. All the studies that have
been done so far have been closed-system studies where you
take a bale and put it into a tank of water and you look at
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what happens. This is not representative of the way things
are in a landfill or the way things are in a lagoon disposal
situation.
All we know now is that when you put solid wastes, plain
solid waste, and then you put baled solid waste in a tank of
water you get some fairly marked differences in behavior. We
hope to be able to do some evaluations in the near future in
actual bale fill situations to try to find out exactly what
those differences are and whether they can be used to advantage
in solid waste management.
The bale fill evaluation at San Diego will consist of gas
and leachate, if any, monitoring because as you know San Diego
is a very arid area and it's unlikely, barring a tidal wave
or something, that the bale fill is ever going to reach field
capacity. But we do have a leachate collection system installed
and we'll look for any if it appears.
We also will be taking settlement readings. The information
available so far is very small, in fact, there's hardly any
information at all on bale fill behavior other than just
qualitative judgments from people who have been on the site.
That's because of the very small tonnage that's been placed so
far.
In the most recent month for which I have data, in
August of this year, they baled about 900 tons. The design
capacity for the plant is 150 tons on a six-hour day. That
was the design figure. We haven't been able to reach that
yet. There have been a number of reasons.
In the first part of the operation there was the standard
de-bugging stuff, you know, lines breaking and fuses blowing,
this kind of thing. There have also been quite a number of
problems with the hand tying operation. The separator blocks
that are installed between the bales have caused a lot of
trouble because they tend to squash down and catch the lines
lit I)
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and the guys can't stick them through, and if they get them
stuck through, they can't pull them out after they get them
tied. There have also been a lot of problems with ties
breaking, but a new alloy for the tie wires has hopefully
solved this problem.
There have also been conveyor problems. Clarence
Kaufman, the Project Director, is right now undergoing
taking on some modifications to speed up the apron conveyor
into the shredder and the bucket conveyor out of the shredder
to try to increase plant capacity. We are pretty confident
that we are going to have it up to design capacity by the
early part of 1973, say in January or February.
The projected operating cost when we get to full capacity
for the whole plant, including amortization, which is 20 years
for the building and 10 years for the equipment, is $4.76 a
ton. We've broken this down with 66 cents a ton for the
feeding part of the operation, $1.17 a ton for shredding,
$2.21 for the baling, 44 cents for the haul to the bale
fill, and 28 cents for the disposal.
The shredding cost sounds very low compared to what we
have experienced before in other shredding operations. You
have to bear in mind that the shredder shares other systems
in common with the rest of the plant. In other words, you
don't have a shredder facility over here and a baler facility
over here. You have an integrated unit. So there are savings,
because things are all there together.
Now the actual operating costs to date have been somewhat
higher because of reduced utilization of the plant. For the
month of August the cost per ton was $12.56. But you have to
bear in mind that this is operating at a third of the plant
capacity.
So far our scale, our through-put versus operating cost,
has stayed on the projection line, pretty close to it and I
think that we're going to be down below the $5 per ton figure
when we get the plant running full tilt.
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I guess you might be interested in any final reports
that are available. There is a report which has just been
sent to the National Technical Information Service which is
a report on the feasibility study that was conducted back in
'67 or '68. This should be available in the near future.
There probably won't be any formal reports available
on San Diego until—on the demonstration project itself—the
evaluation is finished and we have an evaluation program
of one year's length from the initiation of full-scale
operation. So that's in the future.
I thought that what Bill said about the water absorbing
characteristics of the bales was kind of interesting because
with the shredded bales, at San Diego we found the opposite,
that they absorb water quite readily. I don't know what
accounts for this difference but apparently it's there.
We hope, as I said, to get involved in more extensive
bale-fill evaluation programs in the future. We would like to
look in some detail at the behavior of bales in a real landfill.
We would also like to do some more work with baler economics
and management information and systems and cost accounting
systems for baler operations.
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QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION
John Ruf: Now the densities were quoted for baling as
60, 65 pounds per cubic foot. I'm sure this is right after
baling. There's some swelling after baling and when you
stack the bales, there's considerable void because you
cannot stack them perfectly. Now, is there any explanation
of the end landfill densities, how much void you have between
stacking:
Ora Smith: We've done void measurement tests at the
San Diego landfill and the void space there is less than two
percent volume. The spring back is very limited in the tied
bales. The only spring back that occurs is around the
corners of the bales.
I don't have any quantitative information, do you,
Clarence?
Clarence Kaufman: The spring back from the time the
material is originally pressed in the extrusion chamber and
then the time it comes out is about six inches, but this is
all absorbed by slack in the wire. After that the wires retain
it.
Ora Smith: Our traditional measurements are made after
the spring back occurs, I mean the bales are weighed sometime
after they come out of the baler.
William Faulkner: In an unstrapped, unencapsulated bale
fill like ours there are some voids mechanically where the
bales have been placed adjacent or on the top. Of course
there is no movement with one right on top of the other. We
find that with a couple of inches between bales, in about the
first three weeks the bale will grow into that void. If
there's no void there, the bale doesn't grow.
We've had survey stakes in bales six years old and they
haven't moved in an elevated or up condition. We have an old
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working face in our fill that is maybe four or five months old,
it's as solid appearing as that wall, you can't really tell
one bale from another except maybe for a color line.
Dr. Carl Wolfe has done laboratory tests in this area.
He's not associated with our firm or our concept at all as
we are running it. He says that 1800 pounds per cubic yard
is a realistic density in the fill with these bales.
J. B. Druse: You mentioned that you had a leachate
collection system. Would you mind just giving us a brief on
it?
Clarence Kaufman: We installed a French drain type of
system for collecting this leachate in the bottom of the
canyon which then drains down into a concrete headwall so if
the leachate does permeate down through the bales, it can be
collected at that point.
As Ora mentioned, our rainfall is very small in
San Diego. Last year we received a total of five inches;
ten inches is the average. So we really don't expect to get
any leachate through the fill.
At the present time, the depth of our fill is approxi-
mately 25 feet or so, so with the experience we've had of
the absorbtion of moisture into these bales, we certainly
don't expect any of it to leach through.
J. B. Druse: Has American Hoist had any leaching
problems?
William Faulkner: We find, and the slides show, that
the water stands stop or adjacent to the bales. We have
visually experienced no leaching problem. We have not
investigated it. Again I can only relate back to some of
Dr. Wolfe's experimentations. He said in a 950 pound per
cubic year sanitary landfill he experienced a percolation
rate of 43 feet per day through the refuse. In the high-
density bale that he experimented with he found two feet
per day. There certainly is some small amount of leachate
going to be generated with the presence of water. His
statement is that it's highly reduced in its rate of generation.
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Ramesh Shura: By listening to the practical demonstra™
tions today, I have a couple of questions and one is regarding
the leachate. If you use some kind of a lime layer and also
probably a coal as absorption for eliminating the leachate
problem as well as the baling experience; the experience
in carting them there; the bulk is reduced to a very, very
high density volume. Is any of this experience similar with
any kind of solid waste management project in terms of the
assessment aspects? What is the similarity of these concept?,
if at all? Have you ever tried?
Ora Smith: I'm not sure I understand the question.
Ramesh Shura: Dr. Ham indicated his interesting experience
about lime in England. Now, with the lime and also maybe a
coal on the operation, could this, if you're going to use
landfill under the new regulatory procedures—I realize that
it might increase the cost by imposing some kind of arti-
ficial layer in the actual landfill. Now by doing this what
kind of impact might we have on the pollution aspects?
The second question relates to the baling. And that is, since
we already have experience in carton mills, reduction of the
volume of the carton in the various presses, and that experience
can be readily applicable to minimize the cost in terms of
the assessments, is that experience being utilized or
looked upon?
Eugene Wingerter: Let's take that in two parts. I'm
sure the people in the back couldn't hear the question. The
first question is related to the use of synthetic membranes
to isolate or insulate the bales and milled refuse from the
underlying soil conditions and the role of that.
Ora Smith: We've done no work involving capsulating
bales. We have received reports from a Japanese organization
which encapsulated bales in asphalt. Apparently capsulating
bales in asphalt is only a temporary sort of measure to improve
the odor, or eliminate odor problems around storage areas.
In regard to plastic film encapsulation, or anything
like this, we haven't done any work in this area and as far
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as I know there are no plans right now to do any. We have no
recommendations to make regarding that now.
Charles Scott: Did I understand him to—we're into the
possibility of laying a film membrane on each lift, is that
what he referred to?
H. Lanier Hickman: What he said was lime and coal. He's
talking about going to the bottom of the fill, I assume. Putting
down lime and a coal to serve as an attenuation agent for
leachate, similar to the chalk instance that Bob Ham saw in
England and showed a slide of the cut gap fill used in the
control of leachate.
William Faulkner: At the baled fill in St. Paul, we
cleared down to a 15-foot thick, relatively impervious
clay stratum which is about 15 feet above the groundwater,
and this is a barrier for any possible minimal... Does
this help?
Charles Scott: That's better.
William Faulkner: This 15-foot thick clay stratum is,
I think, what you're alluding to as a barrier to any potential
leachate infection of the water. And the minimum quantity of
leachate that might be generated in a baled fill, and
certainly in that fill, depends on finding this clay barrier
before the leachate can get into the area of groundwater or
surface water.
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CONSIDERATIONS FOR RAIL HAUL LAND
DISPOSAL PROGRAMS
David Blomberg*
I was pleased when I looked at the program that they
didn't talk about rail haul and then say, "This talk is
entitled 'Much Ado about Nothing'." Because there's been
so much conversation and so many aborted efforts and so much
money spent down through the years on rail haul.
To my knowledge, as of today, there is not a program of
any magnitude in operation anywhere in the United States. My
major theme today is that in the foreseeable future we will
see major rail haul movement of waste developed within the
United States.
We feel there are some 65 major metropolitan areas in
the United States that today generate enough tonnage to
sustain a realistic, economic rail haul program. By that, I'm
not saying there are going to be 65 rail haul programs
developed, but in a certain percentage of those cases I'm
sure that within the foreseeable future we will see rail haul
movements of solid waste.
Why do we say this? First of all, many, many major
cities throughout the United States are faced with a real
crisis in the disposal of their solid waste. The incinerators
are being closed or subject to being closed in many areas. The
cost of new incinerators is very, very high. The cost of
operating an incinerator is high. And so they're looking for
another direction in many, many cities.
In other areas where they're using dumps or landfills
at the present time, the facilities are filling up rapidly or
they're being closed by various governmental agencies. Cities
such as Chicago and Cleveland and other major cities are
surrounded by a suburban ring and they do not look too kindly
upon the garbage of a major metropolitan area coming into
*Manager, Solid Waste Systems, Waste Management, Inc.,
Oak Brook, Illinois
151
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their fine communities. Consequently, the city is faced with
the problem of bringing that material from the inner city,
from the city proper, to some disposal site at some distance
from the point of collection.
The cities are also faced with another problem, the cost
of land is going up so terrifically that even if they were
able to get a disposal site, the economics are getting more
adverse all the time.
As this distance from point of collection to point of
disposal gets bigger, some type of transfer program must
be initiated, and there are three basic ways in which this
can be accomplished.
First you can haul it out, as we heard yesterday in
Harold Smith's presentation. True, a truck transfer facility
is a very realistic, good, practical way of getting waste
moved from a central city out into some other area. Secondly, in
some parts of the country it's feasible and practical to
consider the barge movement of solid waste. In many areas
of the United States this is completely impractical, of
course. The third alternative is to move it out considerable
distances by rail. Now when you talk about a rail movement of
solid waste or a rail movement of anything I think we have to
give some consideration to the basic structure of a railroad.
A railroad is capable of moving freight at considerable
distance at a rather low cost. I say they're capable of
doing this. Kind of a rule of thumb, and I don't maintain
that this is fact, but a kind of a rule of thumb is that
if you can move it 20 miles by highway then you could probably
move it 100 miles by rail. So that gives you a much broader
perspective of where you can dispose of this material.
Another interesting situation is just the basic funda-
mental differences between trucking and a railroad operation.
If you go from 10 miles to 20 miles by truck, in general terms
your cost doubles. If you go, let's say, from 100 miles to
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200 miles by rail you have very little added cost, just
because of the inherent difference in fixed cost and variable
cost between a trucker and a railroad.
What are some of the conditions that are necessary for a
rail haul program to develop? Many of these represent a
personal opinion and I don't present them to you as being
facts.
First of all, you have to have sufficient tonnage per
day. It becomes impractical to talk about moving low
tonnages by rail. The economics just defeat you. As kind of
rule of thumb, about 1,000 tons a day represent a realistic
minimum. This isn't to say that under certain conditions it
can't be done with lesser tonnage.
Another essential ingredient, if you're going to develop
a rail haul program, is that you have to have an interested
railroad. Now I always put railroads in connection with
these programs in one of three categories. Some railroads are
difficult to work with. Some railroads are impossible to
work with. And some railroads are progressive and have an
active and vital interest in working with people to develop
rail haul programs, and they will give you the help and the
support you need in the development of one of these programs.
In some situations, in some areas, if you're served by
some carriers it's a waste of time to even start, because
they're going to shoot you down every chance that they get.
One of the ways a railroad can indicate to you very
clearly its interest in the development of a rail haul pro-
gram is by the rate per ton that it offers. These rates, from
my experience, vary all over the ballpark. I have had rates
quoted to me on movements—in one particular case, 130 miles—and
the railroad indicated great interest and cooperation, great
interest in getting involved in a program, and they quoted a
rate of something like $5.32 a ton and couldn't quite under-
stand when I said, "Well, I thought we had a bid for the
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contract at about $6.50, and that didn't leave much room for
us." They thought I was from outer space.
That isn't always the case, though. In another situa-
tion, a railroad offered a 1,000-ton-a-day program, moving
the material some 250 miles, and offered a rate of $2.52,
roughly one penny a ton mile, which is a nice working area.
You can move under those conditions 100 miles for about a
dollar a ton.
Some railroads are willing to talk in those terms, and
others are completely unwilling to even consider it.
Another interesting rate, just to throw some of these
figures out to give you a feel for how they look at these
programs, a program again of 1,000 tons a day guaranteed
for 10 years, movement that by highway would be 52 miles
was given a rate of $2.50. Actually that was a very excellent
and a very good rate. It involved a major carrier that was
the result of a merger of two large railroads. But somehow
or other, over the years they never managed to put their
crews together. And so you're really operating with crews on
one railroad that really were part of two railroads and in
moving 52 miles by highway they had five crew changes. This
brings another important consideration into focus and that is
that distance is not always the only criterion on which the
rail rate will be based. The number of crew changes and things
of this type can become far more important than the actual
distance that the freight is going to move.
A railroad can also indicate its interest to you in
developing a rail program if it is willing to talk to you in
terms of a unit train. Many, many railroads indicate an
interest in programs of this type until you bring up this
point and generally speaking their representatives will say,
"Well, No. 7 goes from A to B and we'll tack those cars on
No. 7."
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Well, I think that's the start of your downfall, because
they'll tack it on on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, but
then they have a lot of tonnage on that train on Thursday and
what are they going to leave off, they'll leave the garbage
off. Then you're at the other end, you're trying to operate
a landfill and you have no material coining in.
This isn't to say that it cannot be done in non-unit
train service but it becomes far more difficult and there are
far nore hazards than when you can get them to schedule a
train that's going to be pulled out of your transfer station
at 8 o'clock at night and they'll guarantee that it'll be
at the unloading site at 4 o'clock the next morning. You can
schedule and plan and develop a good operation under those
conditions, but if you're not sure when that material is
going to show up, it's difficult to structure a low-cost,
efficient disposal operation.
Another thing the railroad can do is to give you a
good schedule. If you're going 130 miles and they say that
it's going to take three days to deliver it, you have some
real problems on your hands.
I can think of one of the major carriers in the United
States that we've done some work with on a movement of some
87 to 90 miles at a quoted rate of about $1.05. Now you
start to plug in $1.05 into some of your cost analyses and
you can see that you can start to move waste at a considerable
distance economically.
One of the things that has to be done, however, is to
develop a system that is feasible both economically and
operationally. Perhaps I've been pointing my finger at the
railroad a little bit, but I see a lot of programs that
people are talking about, that they want to go to the railroad
and talk about, that just are unrealistic from the railroad's
point of view.
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You have to do something to that solid waste in order to
achieve the approximate payload of that rail car. You can't
take a car with 100 tons of capacity and expect the railroad
to haul 40 tons on that car. You have to do something to
increase that payload, whether it's baling or compaction of
some kind, but something has to be done to get a good payload
on each rail car.
Another thing that has to be done in working with the
railroads to develop a feasible program is to not ask them
to provide special equipment. If a railroad's on the verge of
bankruptcy and you come in talking to them about a special
rail car that's going to cost 530,000 each, they're just
not going to provide it. If you want to provide it, that's
something else. If you're going to talk to a railroad about
getting into an operation, it better be with the type of car
that they have available and this, then, can sometimes dictate
what system you will employ.
In addition to this, you have to have a large rail-
oriented landfill. Programs of the type we're talking about,
1,000, 2,000, or maybe more tons per day, represent a
tremendous capital investment and you can't get involved in a
program where you have relatively limited landfill capability.
Another point, I don't think the landfill you go into on
a rail haul program can be marginally acceptable, because
whatever the laws are, whatever the rules are today, I think
we can count on one thing, and rightly so, that they're going
to be more stringent, more strict, more definitely enforced
in the future. So if you go into a long, large-scale
program, you'd better make sure that you're going to be able
to operate that site for many, many years to come.
Another ingredient on a rail haul program is you have to
have a municipality that is willing to sign a long-term
contract to put one of these programs together. Now one of the
interesting things yesterday was a little bit of a controversy
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that developed here between private enterprise and the public
domain.
I think a rail haul program is unique in that it really
brings into focus the necessity for co-operation by the
private sector with the public sector, because I don't feel
that either sector can put a program of this type together
by itself. It takes some close cooperation between both
sectors in order to put a program of this type together and
there has to be give and take on both sides of this.
What about sanitary landfills for rail haul? I'm just
going to run through this quickly. Actually, the opportunity,
despite what has happened in the past with so many aborted
efforts, actually the possibility for developing a landfill
rail haul program is much easier to develop than is a landfill
for a truck program.
If you stand before a citizens' group, which maybe
doesn't like your presence in the first place, but you
talk to them about one train a day coming in and one train a
day leaving. That they can understand. Because one of the
legitimate complaints about any landfill anywhere is the
amount of truck traffic going in and out. And so you have
overcome one major hurdle. And when you can talk to them
about sealed closed cars with just one train a day, this does
a lot to help you in the development of a rail program.
The other thing that rail does for you, because it
expands your horizon distancewise, is the fact that you have
the opportunity of using marginal or bad land of some type
that can be reclaimed.
As Mr. Herman mentioned yesterday, in strip mines you have
the opportunity of talking about a land reclamation program,
not just a way of getting rid of some big city's garbage. That's
fatal. Because you're saying, "I want to bring my garbage
into your home." One of the areas that has great fascination
on a rail haul program is the development of sanitary landfills
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in strip mine areas. I just did a little bit of work on where
these areas are. I was, frankly, a little startled.
There are active strip mine activities at the present
time in 22 States. Using a crude estimate, there are
probably 150,000,000 people or 75 percent of the population
of the United States that live within 250 miles or a reasonable
rail haul distance of a strip mine area. And that is really
kind of staggering. Seventy-five percent of our population is
in general terms within 250 miles of an area where there is
strip mine activity.
I think this opens up a tremendous horizon. I realize
there have been so many aborted efforts, but there's going to
be someone who is smart enough and good enough and wise
enough to put together some massive rail haul programs that
are going to use and reclaim these blighted areas.
I'm running over on my time and so I just want to bring
it to a close by saying, in our opinion at Waste Management,
rail haul does represent an excellent way to solve the
disposal problem being faced by major cities throughout the
United States. The climate for putting these programs across
is becoming more favorable every day and it's up to you and me
to work together to see that these programs get put across.
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EPA PLANS FOR RAIL HAUL DEMONSTRATION
Clyde Dial*
I decided to split this into two parts. One, I want
to discuss our beliefs about rail haul and what we have done
in terms of supporting a demonstration for rail haul.
I want to precede that by giving you some of our opinions
of why rail haul is a good thing--Dave covered a good bit
of that.
In discussing our plans, I'd say they're optimistic. By
that, I mean we're pretty well convinced that somewhere within
this country in the not too distant future there will be a
system operating where solid wastes are transferred by rail.
We have a lot of things going for us, I think, that
are going to help us achieve that objective. In the first
place, as Dave pointed out, many cities are really going
through a crunch right now on what to do—major cities are
faced with what to do with their solid waste.
Besides the points he made, the environmental pollution
codes and standards are beginning to become more stringent
and tougher. And this, coupled with the escalating costs of
labor and equipment and construction of various facilities, is
all going together to help facilitate making rail haul a Very
viable alternative. Of course it's very dependent upon the
locale you're trying to place it in.
The large urban areas obviously don't really have the
luxury of having a lot of close-in land and in a lot of cases
where they have the land, the use of that land for the
disposal of solid wastes really is not completely compatible
with the concentration of people that surround that land.
As these systems are being pushed—the locations of the
sites are being pushed farther and farther away from the center
*At time of presentation. Director, Systems Management Division,
Office of Solid Waste Management Programs, U. S. Environmental
Protection Agency
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of cities, the feasibility of transporting it by some method,
rail being one of those, certainly becomes more viable.
The concept of rail haul, as I'm sure all of you know,
is really not new. Early in '65, or a lot of it as early as
"65, there were many attempts principally either by selected
cities, which in all cases failed, or by the rail companies
themselves trying to instigate and begin a program like this
to get one of these systems operational. They all just didn't
pan out. I think the major stumbling block was public
acceptance. I think the name of the game in terms of rail
hauling is public education. I don't think there's a technical
problem associated with it, and under the given and correct
situation, it's certainly not economic.
No one wants to be the garbage dump of a major metro-
politan area. There are a lot of places, I think, that would
benefit by being a garbage dump of a major metropolitan area,
however. I'd like to get into those benefits in just a
minute.
But I want to restate some of the benefits to the
generating city or the source city first. In terms of land
use, obviously you can get the disposal site away from the
high population area and use that land for perhaps the most
productive use.
The economics in given situations certainly are very
favorable now. A lot of cities have used incineration as a
means of extending landfill life. They've also used it as
an alternative to landfilling. We all know what the cost of
incineration is, and it keeps going up while the costs of
rail haul really aren't defined exactly yet, we're of the
opinion that they're very comparable.
As Dave mentioned, we had a study done that showed that
about 50 miles is the break even point of the trade off
between truck transport and rail systems. Well, I think all
these costs in terms of the trade off of one system versus
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another or both in terms of the actual operating costs or in
terms of transportation costs are very dependent upon the
situation of the given locality and you can't really make
general statements about comparative costs. It takes a lot of
effort to really make that hard decision on whether it's the
proper thing to do for a given situation.
From the pollution standpoint, if the source city would
use rail haul and it happens to be using incineration, it
obviously can get around particulate or gaseous emissions
control and eliminate any contamination of groundwaters or
surface waters from the process water of the incinerator.
Finally, rail haul eliminates a lot of day-to-day
operating problems for the community. They aren't really
faced with that continuing problem of trying to locate
additional disposal sites. They have a very defined capital
expenditure situation on their hands in terms of equipment,
et cetera, once they begin the system.
Now, those items are a benefit to the source cities
but I don't think that's the real key question to this whole
concept. It's the receiving area that really has control
over the situation.
In our opinion there are many benefits for the receiving
area which proportionately far outweigh the source city's
benefits. In the first place, they can add a lot of jobs or
at least a number of jobs to their local labor force, both
at the rail head transfer station, which there undoubtedly
has to be, and at the disposal or recycling facility that
might be at the end of that system.
The large scale of this operation can be a real benefit
to them in terms of helping them eliminate the inefficient
and perhaps substandard systems that they have for their own
disposal. In other words, they can team up with the system
that's coming in from the major metropolitan area and use
that facility for the disposal of their own wastes.
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Economics comes into play if they choose to charge a
royalty on the waste that is coming in. If you take a
situation where you have 1,000 tons a day operation five days
a week, a 25-cent royalty constitutes about $65,000 a year.
Now that can be a lot of money to a very sparsely populated
area.
In addition to that, the taxing base in terms of land
values go up, and I think that it obviously increases the
capitalization base for other needed county or local facilities.
Finally, from an environmental point, they can certainly
reclaim land. The recovery of strip mines, scarred lands,
deserts, any submarginal land is certainly a very real
possibility. In strip mine areas, for example, they can
restore it and again it will support vegetation and wildlife
and they can essentially fill up the holes when right now
there's no prospect of that situation happening.
At the same time, tied in with this land correction or
restoration, you also can get at the problems a lot of these
areas have with acid mine drainage, because in establishing «i
proper sanitary landfill process, they're going to control
the drainage through that area and essentially, if not
totally at least partially, eliminate the problems they
have in many of these mine areas in terms of acid mine
drainage.
We're very optimistic about the potential application
of rail haul for solid waste. We believe that the key thing
that needs to be done is actually get a system operating to
demonstrate that it is an acceptable neighbor, so to speak, and
that it is viable from an' economic and technical standpoint.
In this regard we solicited applications for rail haul
projects back in 1971. The response to that solicitation was
somewhat disappointing, mainly because the applications that
came in were either along the lines of looking at the
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feasibility of establishing a rail haul project for a given
area or they were construction grant oriented. They either
wanted a lot of capital money or they wanted to do a study,
and what we really were after was to get a system operating
without supporting a lot of capital expenditures.
We negotiated with those cities and a lot of others
that showed an interest after that solicitation and again
formally solicited in June of this year. Now, in that solici-
tation, we had what we felt were fairly well defined criteria
which the applicants had to meet.
Some of the major criteria were the fact that we
wanted a system that would handle at least 500 tons a day
and that preferrably transported the waste 100 miles. The
key thing on that point was that the disposal facility or the
end point of the system would be outside the political
influence of the source city. And, finally, as Pave mentioned,
we would insist that the actual disposal operation be an
environmentally acceptable operation and comply with all
the standards that are in that area.
Now to get down to the point, well, what have we really
done. As a result of that solicitation we have awarded a
grant to the City of Cleveland for $530,000. That grant is
phased in two parts.
The first part is the three-month period during which
the city officials must secure an acceptable series of
contracts to get the project underway, such as obtaining a
site, negotiating and obtaining a contract with a rail
system, and obviously, locate a disposal point. They
guaranteed us, in the terms of the grant, that they would
haul 500 tons a day. Their system is going to be designed for
about 1200 tons a day, and we actually anticipated operating
more closely to that figure than the 500.
The exact details of the system are really not completely
clear yet, for good reasons. They're going to solicit bids.
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They're going to put out bid specifications and solicit bids
on their system, but basically they envision their system to
be taking an existing incinerator on the west side of the
community and converting that to a truck transfer facility.
They'll transfer the waste from that facility to the east
side of the community where they have yet to locate an
actual site.
If you're familiar with Cleveland, you'll appreciate the
difficulties that might present to them. They have three
months to do that. Assuming they're able to get a site, they're
going to establish a rail transfer station in which the waste
will be baled, placed on the cars, and sent about 120 miles
away to a strip mine area.
Our grant support provided support and financial
assistance really in four areas. We paid for the management
personnel costs associated with the rail haul system. We
are paying for systems evaluation by consultants and the
detailed engineering of the transfer facility, and finally
the cost of a public relations program to try to sell the
concept.
It's our firm belief that unless one of these systems
can operate on its own financially, stand on its own
financially, it should not be implemented. Consequently,
our grant support in no way supports the construction or
operation of this system or equipment purchases associated
with the system. The main purpose of our demonstration is
really two-fold.
First, we want to put our support behind the source
city, in this case Cleveland, and try to help them sell the
concept and be able to accomplish and get over all of the
social, political and public relations barriers which have
historically stymied the start of one of these operations.
Secondly, we want to provide an unbiased evaluation
from an economic and technical standpoint so that if other
cities desire to at least consider rail haul as an alternative,
they will have an unbiased documentation and analysis of a
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rail haul system, an actual operating system.
We believe that that's going to be a lot better than
having a rail company try to sell them or anyone else
outside that might have a vested interest in trying to sell
them on a concept.
Just to put it in perspective as to when you might see a
train rolling out of Cleveland, the contract documents have
to be completed by February of '73. Following that they're
going to have a construction period and it's a complex
project. It seems like a short period of time here, but
there are other things happening before those actual contract
documents are developed that are unrelated to this project
directly, but have a relationship indirectly. Nevertheless,
the system will be constructed by June. In August of next
year they will begin a 12-month operation-evaluation period.
So theoretically, and hopefully, within about a year and a
half we should have a rail system operating.
To summarize our feelings, we certainly believe that
rail haul is almost inevitable as a solution to major
metropolitan areas for many reasons.
First, the close-in land values are such and the difficulty
in obtaining this land, this is going to force cities to go
beyond where they are right now.
The economics of the system are certainly comparable
to many other environmentally acceptable systems today. It's
not competitive with some of the systems major metropolitan
areas are using today, but it is competitive with environ-
mentally acceptable systems.
The disposal of the waste in barren land such as strip
mines or deserts or whatever, we believe is a very real
factor, because this land in itself, by being reclaimed, is
going to accomplish something that's going to be very, very
beneficial to the country and to the receiving area.
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And, finally, the long term prospects of being able to
facilitate some type of resource recovery operation is
probably enhanced because with a system like this, they're
not going to go unless they get large quantities of waste.
If the economics, or the markets I should say, turn out to
be proper you could facilitate a recycling operation.
To summarize it, we just hope to demonstrate that the
concept of establishing a rail haul system is a very viable
alternative to major metropolitan areas in solving their
problems.
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QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION
Samuel Johnson: I'm from Kentucky, the State that's the
largest coal producer in the nation and has more areas and
acres of strip mines in the country. Our Water Pollution
Commission has said absolutely no to the use of the strip
mines, absolutely no. And I agree with them after seeing
the problems, working with small sanitary landfills in the
strip mine areas, I couldn't agree with them more. I don't
think we want your waste at all in Kentucky. Consider that
when you start putting it on the train, because we don't
want it. We've already found out it doesn't work in the
strip mine areas.
J. B. Druse: This question is for Mr. Blomberg. Have
you made any projection or projected cost studies on the
total costs, because you've got a transfer station on both
ends?
And, secondly, some year and a half or two years ago
your company was successful in getting a contract in the
City of Milwaukee in competition with the Pullman Company
who were fostering a rail haul system. I was wondering if
you could give us a little quickie on that.
David Blomberg: Costs are going to vary all over the
place. Everybody's interested in kind of a ballpark
figure—what are you talking about, ballpark? I believe it's
realistic depending upon the quantity of wastes that you're
going to be moving. I think it's -.ealistic for these
programs to come in under 56.00 a ton. Under some conditions
with sufficient quantity and from there you go on up.
Just to allude back to the time of the Milwaukee program.
There was strong competition for that contract. There was
another contract that was bid in Cleveland at that same time
for a complete package program where there was absolutely
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no investment on the part of the community at all. It was
all private capital involved. And that was 1,000 tons a day
bid at $6.75 a ton for the first 300,000 tons and there was a
discount of 20 percent for tonnage over 300,000 tons.
Now those figures are a little old and we've had inflation
since then, but I think that kind of gives you a ballpark
figure.
Robert Robinson: As far as the pollution control
agencies in our State, I don't think we have any problems
accepting solid waste in our strip mines.
The question I have for Mr. Blomberg is, in dealing with
the railroads, do you find that when you cross State lines
this is a problem, I mean from the I.C.C.? What problems as
far as rates? The railroad, I understand, will be able to
give a much better rate if you're only hauling within the
State.
David Blomberg: I don't think that is the area of
biggest problem. I think the area of biggest problem is some
States take a very dim view of waste material coming from
another area. You can get a good economic freight rate
from a railroad even if you're going from one State to
another. The problem is one of jurisdiction, one governmental
agency versus another.
Eugene Wingerter: Dave, let me just ask a parallel
question at this time. It's one that's come up a number
of times recently.
With the inequities in the freight rates for transporting
secondary materials versus virgin materials, do we have a
similar inequity in transporting waste versus other types of
high density materials such as stone or gravel?
David Blomberg: I hate to sit before 200 gentlemen
and say I don't know the answer to that. I just don't.
William Culham: So far we've talked about baling as a
method of preparing wastes for rail haul. Do you foresee any
problems with shredded waste in transporting?
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Clyde Dial: I think in that regard we, obviously,
received more applications than just Cleveland. Some of the
other systems that are still under consideration for possible
demonstration grant involve systems other than baling, or
other processes in addition to baling. It's a combination.
Just to give an example, some of the configurations
which have been examined by ourselves or other cities include
containerization, either with shredding or without shredding,
shredding and baling, baling alone or just placing it in an
uncompacted form, which I really don't think is very feasible,
in come type of hopper car and then covering that to make sure
it doesn't get away from you on moving trains. There's a
lot of different type systems that are being considered and
some of them do not include baling.
Howard Christensen: I have two questions for Mr.
Faulkner. I'd like to know how far the end haul is in the
baling system and if he would care to reveal the cost for
the end haul and maintenance costs on the baling operation.
William Faulkner: The haul to the bale fill is 11
miles one way from the baling plant. The baled fill
operator can actually put a ton a minute in the ground, two
bales every three minutes. We've scaled that down conserva-
tively to 35 tons per hour and operating costs , without the
land considerations involved, equipment, hours, fringe
benefits and so forth, are 65 cents a ton.
Howard Christensen: How about maintenance on the baler?
William Faulkner: I think that a cost study on these
balers in scrap steel service shove a very—it sounds like a
sales pitch—high degree of reliability utilization of 95
to 98 percent of the time in open service with scrap steel.
A baler operator, and I can't recall his name, in Philadelphia
recited an annual baler maintenance and repair cost of about
$5,000. This is corresponding to our maintenance expenses,
repair parts, and service to the equipment in St. Paul.
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Edward Hell: Mr. Faulkner, I wanted to ask you, do you
use ties on your baling?
William Faulkner: No, the bales are neither strapped
or encapsulated. The refuse goes into the charge chamber,
5,000,000 pounds of hydraulic pressure in three dimensions,
the bale as you saw in the off-loading ramp is—the density
is obtained and continued in between 60 and 70 pounds per
cubic foot without mechanical ties or encapsulations or
adhesives.
Edward Heil: Do you have an actual cost per ton for the
whole system?
William Faulkner: The capital investment in this plant
in St. Paul is $1,300,000 without the cost of the land. That's
turn key, building, concrete, conveyor, baler, mechanical, and
electrical work.
On an 800-ton-a-day capability, two shifts, which this
plant has in its capability, the operating costs, 10 year
debt retirement at 9 percent interest with labor, labor
overhead like vacations and jury duty and what-have-you,
insurance on the facilities, power supply costs, the whole
range of the cost that you would have in a comptroller's
review of this operation is under $2 a ton, more specifically,
about $1.82 per ton. That's loose refuse on the floor to a
bale in a truck.
Edward Heil: How about in the ground, the total cost?
William Faulkner: Well, the trucking expense is three
cents a ton a mile and I related the 65 cent figure.
James Mueller: You made the statement that you need not
contain the bales. How do you recommend handling specialty
problems such as tires or mattresses, or do you get these in
any volume?
William Faulkner: Oh, yes, in fact Monday is mattress
day. They all clean out the garage on Saturday and Sunday
per orders from the high command and Mondays you come to our
plant and you'll see that conveyor system loaded with a half-
dozen mattresses.
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We were showing this to a gentleman from the Greater
London Council last week and the mattresses started coming.
The one discipline in the frontend loader's operation is that
he should put on there a reasonable mixture of the refuse we
receive. Two mattresses and two tires got in one bale. He,
kind of being shredder oriented, inhaled a little bit, but it
did make a good bale. We pass these things through, tires,
one to a bale is no problem whatsoever. If it's four to six
inches inside the face of the bale you'll never know it's there.
If it's on the face of the bale, its memory may take it
to the point where it will emerge out from the face maybe a
tenth or a quarter of its configuration and then the refuse
seems to grab hold of it and it's carried onto the fill and put
away that way.
We like tires. We find a man can get a dollar a tire,
so we process it through the baler without problems. Auto-
mobiles and demolition material make a fine bale. We had a
contractor from a demolition fill ask us to bale 50 tons of
pallets, plasterboard, shingles, furniture, tires, and they
made exceptionally fine bales.
Richard Power: I have two questions. Number one, what's
your maximum down time? Number two, how would you recommend
treating the liquid that squeezes from the compression
chamber?
William Faulkner: I think the first question was down
time. We have a $12,000 spare parts inventory. If an
electric motor burns out, we have one that slips in. Our
down time has been ranging, to change a relay or limit
switch or an 0 ring seal, you can program some of these in
off working time. To replace a burned out motor in a conveyor
cr orie of the large ones in the power system, about two to
three hours. We have a surge area in the floor of the plant
that is slightly under the two-shift capacity of the plant,
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between four and five hundred tons per day.
As far as liquids coming out of the compression chamber,
in normal operations and normal climatic conditions without
too much rain prevalent, we won't get over about a five gallon
paint bucket full a day. The moistures in the refuse seem
to stay within the bales, being impregnated from the wet
into the dry particles. On an extremely rainy day with
water running out of the collection trucks as they dump their
loads, there will be more of this moisture coming out of the
compression chamber under the heavy pressures.
Our present system, which seems to have incurred no
one's wrath, is that that goes into the sanitary sewer.
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THE NEED FOR LAND-USE POLICY
H. Lanier Hickman, Jr.*
Talking about land-use policy is about as esoteric a
conversation in the United States today as talking population
control. However, ever since man got up on his hind feet, off all
fours, and decided that he was going to be the bull of the woods,
man has wanted to own the woods, and that attitude is reflected in
the way our country presently pursues the use of land.
Our pioneer forefathers who emigrated and settled in the
United States came over for a variety of reasons—religious oppression,
political oppression, economic oppression, but centered within all
those needs to throw off oppression was a concommitant drive to own
land.
And where we now have certain regulations that reflect our
desires to protect the air, water, and the ocean, nowhere have we
really addressed ourselves to the protection of the land—from the
standpoint of ownership, right of use, future use, or whatever.
In the past when you bought a piece of land you also got the
water and the air that went with it and the right to use it as you
saw fit. But today's America provides safeguards to attempt to
assure you use the air and water properly. But for some reason we've
forgotten the land and the land is now the recipient of all the
effects of our sins in the air and the water.
There is land demand inherent in air and water pollution control
systems. That demand impacts on solid waste management systems and
subsequently the land that solid waste management systems need. Yet
there is no policy, really, at any level of government, committed to
protecting the land. Yet, those of us in solid waste management feel
that there is a stronger need for controlling land use than any other
aspect of environmental control.
*Director of Operations for The Office of Solid Waste Management Programs,
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
-------
At some time, somewhere in this country, in the near future,
however, we will need to address ourselves to this problem as a nation
and as a people. This country will have to develop a principle to
utilize the land yet hold the impact (negative) to a minimum.
There is a good deal of current Federal activity in land-use
planning and land-use concepts. HUD, for example, has 701 planning
grants which are both general and specific plans developed and
directed toward land use.
We have our own solid waste planning grants in Section 207 of the
Resource Recovery Act. This type of planning is specific planning for
solid waste management systems.
Yet both of these planning activities supported by the Federal
government are directed toward plans that are developed primarily
by agencies that have no mechanism by which to protect the land
that they're planning to use, much less implement those plans to use
that land in the way that it should be used.
Because of the way government is organized at the local. State,
and Federal level, no one controls the land except the individual
citizen, and it looks as though the citizens must decide whether we
want to continue to let the individual citizen control the land when
we've; taken away from him the right to control the water and the air.
And therein lies the philosophical constraint that we'll have to
overcome in the next few years if we are to come up with a national
policy on land use.
Given the present economic constraints in our country, the
inflation that we face, the demand for the public dollar, there is
an inherent desire and demand to utilize that land to bring in more
money, not necessarily to protect the land. The Federal government
recently considered legislation to establish a Federal position on
land-use planning which basically placed the responsibility on State
governments to assume land-use planning and regulatory authority over
land use. This legislation did not pass.
174
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Solid waste management is frequently not considered in land-use
planning. Solid waste management is the last thing that they think
about when they start blocking out land. Space is provided for new
industrial plants, parks, single- and multi-family dwellings, schools,
interstate highways, everything. And, then, maybe there is some
mention in the plan down at the bottom of the last page of the plan
that says, "And, by the way, you ought to have sites for solid waste
management." "By the way!"
And of you who have read the general use kind of plans that
are developed by our planning agencies would agree that this tends
to be the normal practice of planning. And if solid waste management
needs are considered, they are considered in a negative rather than
a positive way. This land cannot be used for solid waste. Not: this
land can be used, that land cannot be used. It's the same negative
reaction that the solid waste management field faces in all aspects of
its operation.
There's a reluctance to allow land to be used to accept solid
waste and, yet, now that we're trying to move out of the Dark Ages
of the dump, there's more concern over the sanitary landfill than there
was ever over the dump which really pollutes the land. Few people are
excited about the dump, but mention a sanitary landfill and everybody's
excited—unfortunately, in a negative manner. Again, it's a reflection
that no level of government controls the land. There is no one that
makes the decision on how land should be used.
We are going to continue to need and have solid waste disposal
sites because there's no magic black box that's going to make solid
wastes go away. There will always be some residue requiring disposal
on the land. We've got to secure disposal sites not only for now but
for the future. There are some enlightened parts of our country that
are securing disposal sites for use 50 years hence. Some, but not many.
And we've got to hold this land in trust for future need. There has
to be a mechanism by which land use planning and land use acquisition
will allow for that sort of trust.
175
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Perhaps local government can't do this. I don't know. The past
track records would indicate that they can't or won't. Regional
agencies because of the structure of local government are not implementers,
they're not doers, except in unique instances. So, obviously, we need a
level of government to exercise greater control and share in securing
land for all purposes, including solid waste management. It's thus
apparent at least to me that State government must get involved. States
still retain the right of eminent domain.
Our Agency is doing everything we can to sell the concept of the
use of land for solid waste management. It's very difficult, given a
past track record of the solid waste management systems in this country.
All of us at this conference have spent two days talking about
sanitary landfill; we've really talked about land use. We've talked
about protecting the land from pollution. Land is going to be used
and dumps are going to disappear. If we do nothing else in the next
15 years in this country but eliminate the open burning dump as a cheap
alternative and as the out for solid waste management, we will have come
a long way from where we were in 1965.
The dump is going to disappear and for this to happen, control
of land pollution by government must start. Some level of government
must protect the land from ourselves. We must decide whether a
developer should be allowed to put up a high-rise or whether it is
indeed more important that a piece of land be saved for solid waste
management, not just for today, but for 10 years, or 15, or 20 years
from now.
The sanitary landfill and its variations such as milled disposal
sites and the baled fill, are going to continue to use and need the
land, as we, as responsible citizens totally committed to an
environmental ethic, must start to address ourselves to the demand
for the protection of the land by a responsible level of government.
176
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All of us will benefit from a strong control of the land.
Because in the long-term final analysis, what all responsible solid
waste managers are trying to do is to save the land, because there's
nothing else left to us. Everything starts and ends with the land,
not the water or the air.
Solid waste management systems must be operated in such a manner
as to protect the land and we can start by operating responsible
solid waste disposal operations.
The protection of the land from pollution must begin and it must
begin now at every level of government if we're going to protect it
for the future.
177
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REGISTRATION LIST
Barry Abbott
Arizona State Dept. of Health
2975 West Fairmount
Phoenix, Arizona 85017
William C. Achinger
Environmental Protection Agency
5555 Ridge Avenue
Cincinnati, Ohio 45268
Commissioner Wm. R. Adams
Dept. of Environmental Protection
State of Maine
Augusta, Maine 04330
Donald Andres
State Dept. of Public Health
2151 Berkeley Way
Berkeley, California 94704
A. J. Bader
Caterpillar Tractor Company
100 N.E. Adams
Peoria, Illinois 61602
Terry Baer
King Container Service
1441 Gest Street
Cincinnati, Ohio 45203
Trygve Bakkon
Waste Management, Inc.
900 Jorie Boulevard
Oak Brook, Illinois 60521
Patrick Banfield
SCA
530 East First Street South
Boston, Massachusetts
Clifford Barcomb
Syracuse Supply Company
Rochester, New York 14623
Frank A. Beets
Tri-City Construction Company
3001 East 83rd Street
Kansas City, Missouri
Don Berman, Director
Waste Management Systems
Allegheny Co. Regulatory Authority
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Norman Berthusin
E & E Hauling, Inc.
1955 North 18th Avenue
Melrose Park, Illinois 60160
Gerry Bissell, Manager
Dispose-All Services
515 - 2 Street South
Lethbridge, Alberta Canada
David Blackman
Douglas County Courthouse
Lawrence, Kansas
Dave Blomberg
Waste Management, Inc.
900 Jorie Boulevard
Oak Brook, Illinois 60521
Carl Bohl
Monsanto Company
800 North Lindbergh Boulevard
St. Louis, Missouri 63166
J. Warren Bond
Kansas Waste Disposal, Inc.
1042 South West Street
Wichita, Kansas
Clarence Boner
Westview Landfill, Inc.
1680 Gordon Street S. W.
Atlanta, Georgia 30310
178
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Willis Booth
General Electric Company
Room 2083, Bldg. 37 - P.O. Box 43
Schenectady, New York 12302
Vincent A. Bowen
Viking Disposal & Bldg. Services
P. 0. Box 20173
Bloomington, Minnesota
Charles Bowen
Westview Landfill, Inc.
1680 Gordon Street S. W.
Atlanta, Georgia 30310
Steve Brauheim
Environmental Ventures
3530 McLaughlin
Los Angeles, California
L. W. Bremser
Black & Veatch
P. O. Box 8405
Kansas City, Missouri 64114
Dennis P. Bridge
PPG Industries, Inc.
One Gateway Center
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15222
Andy D. Briscoe
Briscoe Management Services, Inc.
5473 Western Avenue
Boulder, Colorado 80301
Dr. Sanford M. Brown, Jr.
Dept. of Environmental Health
East Tennessee State University
Johnson City, Tennessee 37601
William Buiten
Waste Management, Inc.
900 Jorie Boulevard
Oak Brook, Illinois 60521
W. Button
Theta Associates, Inc.
15 Spinning Wheel Road
Hinsdale, Illinois
John O. Burckle
Environmental Protection Agency
5555 Ridge Avenue
Cincinnati, Ohio 45268
Thomas E. Cavanagh, Jr.
Illinois Environmental Protection Agency
2200 Churchill Road
Springfield, Illinois 62706
Harry Cerny
Pacific Concrete S Rock Company, Ltd.
2344 Pahounui Drive
Honolulu, Hawaii 96819
John Charnetski
Iowa State Dept. of Health
Lucas State Office Building
Des Moines, Iowa 50319
Alfred S. Chipley
Alabama State Dept. of Public Health
State Office Building
Montgomery, Alabama 36104
Howard F. Christensen
County of Monroe
39 West Main Street
Rochester, New York 14604
Elmer G. Cleveland
EPA, Region IV
1421 Peachtree Street, N. E.
Atlanta, Georgia 30309
Weems Clevenger
EPA, Region II
26 Federal Plaza
New York, New York 10007
Francis H. Cloud
Cloud's Landfill
P. 0. Box 339
Oxford, Pennsylvania
19363
Ralph Collister
Eidal International
P. O. Box 2087
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87103
179
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Robert A. Colonna
Environmental Protection Agency
1835 K Street, N. W.
Washington, D.C. 20007
Sam Comeriato
Akron Landfill & Waste
P. O. Box 1334
Akron, Ohio 44309
Alan B. Cooper
John Carollo Engineers
3308 North Third Street
Phoenix, Arizona 85012
Fred Cope
Humboldt County
Department of Public Works
Eureka, California
A. F. Corbe II
City of St. Petersburg
P. O. Box 2842
St. Petersburg, Florida
Mike Gorman
A-l Scavenger
1818 North 18th Street
St. Louis, Missouri
Richard Crites
Waste Management, Inc.
900 Jorie Boulevard
Oak Brook, Illinois 60521
Herbert C. Crowe
EPA, Region VI
1600 Patterson, Suite 1100
Dallas, Texas 75201
Charles Crowson
Department of Pollution Control
and Ecology
Little Rock, Arkansas
William B. Culham
City of Portland
Room 407 City Hall
1220 S. W. Fifth Street
Portland, Oregon 97204
Bill Dana
Solid Waste Division
Department of Environmental Quality
1234 S. W. Morrison
Portland, Oregon 97205
A. Nelson Davis
EPA, Region III «
6th s Walnut Streets
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19106
«
Truett DeGeare
Environmental Protection Agency
5555 Ridge Avenue
Cincinnati, Ohio 45268
James E. Delaney
Environmental Protection Agency
5555 Ridge Avenue
Cincinnati, Ohio 45213
Jack DeMarco
Environmental Protection Agency
5555 Ridge Avenue
Cincinnati, Ohio 45268
Clyde R. Dempsey
Environmental Protection Agency
5555 Ridge Avenue
Cincinnati, Ohio 45268
Clyde J. Dial
Environmental Protection Agency
5555 Ridge Avenue
Cincinnati, Ohio 45268
Ronald Disrud
State Department of Health
Office Building #2
Pierre, South Dakota
A. W. Doepke, Jr.
5420 East 10th Street
Kansas City, Missouri
David D. Dominick, Assistant Administrator
for Categorical Programs
Environmental Protection Agency
Room 1027A Waterside Mall West
4th & M Streets, S. W.
Washington, D.C. 20460
180
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R. E. Dorer
Virginia State Health Department
Room 209, 401-A Colley Avenue
Norfolk, Virginia 23507
J. B. Druse
Dept. of Pollution Control
2562 Executive Cent. Circle, East
Tallahassee, Florida 32301
Leo Edison
Williams Brothers Engineering Co.
321 South Boston Street
Tulsa, Oklahoma 74103
W. A. Erlenbach
Berwick Forge & Fabricating
P.O. Box 188
Berwick, Pennsylvania 18603
J. Edward Farrell
Land Restoration Corporation
P. O. Box 264
Sun Valley, California
Tom Fatjo
Browning Ferris Industries
Fannin Bank Building
Houston, Texas 77025
William Faulkner, Vice President
American Solid Waste Systems
63 South Robert Street
St. Paul, Minnesota 55107
James E. Fibbe
Mobile County Board of Health
248 Cox Street - P.O. Box 4533
Mobile, Alabama 36604
Stephen Feinman
Cherryhill Township
820 Mercer Street
Cherryhill, New Jersey
Dennis Fenn
Environmental Protection Agency
5555 Ridge Avenue
Cincinnati, Ohio 45268
Sidney Fitzgerald
Department of Pollution Control
and Ecology
Little Rock, Arkansas
Jack Fly
Williams Brothers Engineering Co.
321 South Boston Street
Tulsa, Oklahoma 74103
Jim Flynn
United Disposal, Inc.
1838 North Broadway
St. Louis, Missouri 63102
Floyd Forsberg
Minnesota Pollution Control Agency
717 Delaware, S. E.
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55440
Bert Fowler
Waste Management, Inc.
900 Jorie Boulevard
Oak Brook, Illinois 60521
D. Freeman
American Container Service
3920 Singleton Boulevard
Dallas, Texas 75212
Lee H. Frisbie, Manager
Environment Protection
Chemagro - Box 4913
Kansas City, Missouri 64120
H. Fritz
Theta Associates, Inc.
15 Spinning Wheel Road
Hinsdale, Illinois 60521
Leonard Freeman
City of St. Petersburg
P. 0. Box 2842
St. Petersburg, Florida
Francis S. Fyles
Protection Division Agency of
Environmental Conservation
Montpelier, Vermont
181
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John F. Gallagher
Bureau of Solid Waste
100 Nashua Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02114
Don B. Gallay
City of Chicago
320 North Clark Street
Chicago, Illinois
Lawrence P. Gazda
EPA, Region VIII
Suite 900, 1860 Lincoln Street
Denver, Colorado 80203
Lavern Gibson
Gibson Service Company
P. O. Box 312
Terre Haute, Indiana
Max Gibson
Gibson Service Company, Inc.
P. O. Box 312
Terre Haute, Indiana 47808
M. Gilreath
Wheatridge Disposal
Arvda, Colorado
Kenneth P. Goldbach
Dept. of Environmental Conservation
50 Wolf Road
Albany, New York 12201
Samuel Hale, Jr., Deputy Assistant
Administrator for Solid Waste
Management Programs
Environmental Protection Agency
1835 K Street, N. W.
Washington, D.C. 20460
Dr. Robert Ham
University of Wisconsin
Madison, Wisconsin 53706
Robert W. Harding
EPA, Region VIII
Suite 900, 1860 Lincoln Street
Denver, Colorado 80203
William L. Harger
Sunbeam Coal Corporation
P. 0. Box 5
Boyers, Pennsylvania 16020
William Harrington
Whitman, Requardt S Associates
Baltimore, Maryland
Paul W. Harris
Hyster Company
P.O. Box 289
Kewanee, Illinois 61443
Jim Hartley
Hartley's Garbage Service
3630 York Road
Helena, Montana 59601
Jim Greco Dennis E. Hawker
National Solid Waste Management Assoc. Illinois Institute for Env. Quality
1145 - 19th Street, N. W. 309 West Washington
Washington, D.C. Chicago, Illinois
Jose C. Guerrero
Department of Public Works
Agana, Guam
Dick L. Hahn
U.S. Forest Service, USDA
1621 North Kent Street
Arlington, Virginia 22209
Albert Hayes
Environmental Protection Agency
1835 K Street, N. W.
Washington, D.C.
Rodney Hansen
EPA, Region X
1200 Sixth Avenue
Seattle, Washington 98101
182
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Kenneth Hartburger
United Disposal Inc.
1838 North Broadway
St. Louis, Missouri 63102
Edward Heil
E s E Hauling, Inc.
1955 North 18th Avenue
Melrose Park, Illinois 60160
Ben Heslinga
Will County Landfill Inc.
P. O. Box 105
Lockport, Illinois 60441
Dennis Huebner
EPA, Region I
John F. Kennedy Federal Building
Boston, Massachusetts 02203
H. Wayne Huizenga
Waste Management, Inc.
900 Jorie Boulevard
Oak Brook, Illinois 60521
William P. Hulligan
Cleveland Maintenance Inc.
4699 Commerce Avenue
Cleveland, Ohio 44103
Donald O. Hiland Cecil Iglehart, Jr.
Pima County, Ariz. Dept. of Sanitation Mobile Waste Control Inc.
Pima County Governmental Center 8806 Nottingham Parkway
Tucson, Arizona 85701 Louisville, Kentucky 40222
H. Lanier Hickman, Jr., Deputy Dir.
Office of Solid Waste Management Prog.
Environmental Protection Agency
1835 K Street, N. W.
Washington, D.C. 20460
L. H. Hileman
University of Arkansas
Soil Testing Laboratory
Fayetteville, Arkansas 72701
Robert D. Himschoot
Gulf Disposal, Inc.
832 Sunset Vista Drive
Fort Myers, Florida 33901
James H. Hodges
West Virginia State Health Dept.
1800 Washington Street, East
Charleston, West Virginia 25305
James Holbert
American Container Service
3920 Singleton Blvd.
Dallas, Texas 75212
Buck Hubbard
Estes Service Company
P. O. Box 7085
Fort Worth, Texas
Gordon N. Ishikawa
State Department of Health
1250 Punchbowl Street
Honolulu, Hawaii
Randall Jessee
EPA, Region VII
1735 Baltimore Avenue
Kansas City, Missouri 64108
Samuel N. Johnson, Jr.
Kentucky Department of Health
275 East Main Street
Frankfort, Kentucky 40601
Robert C. Jones
Floyd G. Browne & Associates, Ltd.
703 North Perry Street
P. O. Box 27
Napoleon, Ohio 43545
Clarence E. Kaufman
City of San Diego
Public Works Administration
1222 First Avenue
San Diego, California 92101
William Q. Kehr
EPA, Region V
1 North Wacker Drive
Chicago, Illinois 60606
183
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Charles M. Kelly
S. C. Pollution Control Authority
1321 Lady Street
Columbia, South Carolina 29211
Keith Kelton
Alaska Dept. of Environmental Cons.
Pouch 0
Juneau, Alaska 99801
B. J. Kiley, Jr., President
Theta Associates, Inc.
15 Spinning Wheel Road
Hinsdale, Illinois 60521
F. E. Xirkpatrick
Black & Veatch
Kansas City, Missouri
Larry Kramer
Minnesota Pollution Control Agency
717 Delaware, S. E.
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55440
William D. La Cour
Pennsylvania Dept. of Env. Res.
105 Oak Park Circle
Hamsburg, Pennsylvania 17109
Samuel C. Lagow
Texas State Dept. of Health
1100 West 49th Street
Austin, Texas 78756
Maj. William 0. Lamb
USA Environmental Highway Agency
Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland 21010
Russell Kisseberth
Waste Management, Inc.
900 Jorie Boulevard
Oak Brook, Illinois 60521
Mr. Albert Klee
National Environmental Res. Center
Environmental Protection Agency
Cincinnati, Ohio 45268
Eddie Kohl
State Wide Landfill
P. O. Box 1334
Akron, Ohio 44309
Carl C. Kohnert, Jr.
EPA, Region IX
100 California Street
San Francisco, California 94111
Daniel F. Kolberg
Wisconsin Dept. of Natural Res.
P. 0. Box 450
Madison, Wisconsin 53701
Paul Koruna
Waste Management, Inc.
900 Jorie Boulevard
Oak Brook, Illinois 60521
Gordon P. Larson
Waste Resources Inc., Consultant
Route 4, Box 192
Shelton, Washington 98584
Elmer Lauer
Waste Management, Inc.
900 Jorie Boulevard
Oak Brook, Illinois 60521
John E. Law
Williams Pat. Crusher S Pulv. Co.
2701 North Broadway
St. Louis, Missouri 63102
Michael Lawlor
Browning Ferris Industries
Fannin Bank Building
Houston, Texas 77025
Stan A. Leitner
United Disposal, Inc.
1838 North Broadway
St. Louis, Missouri 63102
R. D. Lemenazer
Waste Management, Inc.
900 Jorie Boulevard
Oak Brook, Illinois 60521
181
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Walter W. Liberick, Jr.
Environmental Protection Agency
5555 Ridge Avenue
Cincinnati, Ohio 45268
Chuck Linn, P.E.
State Department of Health
535 Kansas Avenue
Topeka, Kansas 66603
Kenneth Lustig
Panhandle Health District, Idaho
P. O. Box 608 - Lakeside Avenue
Coeur d'Alene, Idaho 83814
Dotson D. Luton
Tennessee Valley Authority
BSD Building
Muscle Shoals, Alabama 35660
Rex Lyne
Balderson Inc.
430 Lincoln
Wamego, Kansas 66547
Angus G. MacPhee
Oregon Disposal Co., Inc.
Box 73
Wilsonville, Oregon 97070
Carmine F. Malanka, P.E.
Mall Land Fill Associates
1317 Bergenline Avenue
Union City, New Jersey 07087
James J. Maynard
Syracuse Supply Company
294 Ainsly Drive
Syracuse, New York 13205
Jack T. Merrick
Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Co.
19th & Kansas Avenues
Kansas City, Kansas
Walter Miles
Division of Solid Wastes
Maryland State Dept. of Health
610 North Howard Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21201
Bobby Earl Miller
Oklahoma State Health Department
620 South Canadian
Purcell, Oklahoma 73080
Bryan E. Miller
Environmental Improvement Agency
Room 517, PERA Bldg., P. 0. Box 2348
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501
Dave Miller
Superior Refuse Disposal
Box 10453
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15234
Robert E. Mitchell
The Ralph M. Parsons Company
550 Paiea Street
Honolulu, Hawaii
I. M. Mobley
Disposal Systems, Inc.
Box 1640
Kilgore, Texas 75662
Richard Molenhouse
Waste Management, Inc.
900 Jorie Boulevard
Oak Brook, Illinois 60521
J. L. Mueller
Caterpillar Tractor Company
100 N. E. Adams
Peoria, Illinois 61602
James J. Murphy
Dept. of Environmental Protection
Solid Waste Management
P. O. Box 1390
Trenton, New Jersey 08625
Terrance Murtha
Murtha Companies
P. O. Box 7
Naugatuck, Connecticut 06770
Robert A. McCaig
Advance Container of Canada
R. R. #5
St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada
185
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Jim McCall
Environmental Ventures
3530 McLaughlin
Los Angeles, California 90066
Don McClenahan, Executive Director
Chicago & Suburban Refuse
188 Industrial Drive, Suite 10
Elmhurst, Illinois 60126
Mike McHugh
Ingersoll Sanitation
Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada
William K. McKie, P.E.
W. K. McKie & Associates, Inc.
201 West Burnsville Crosstown
Burnsville, Minnesota 55337
Roger D. McKillip
Browning Ferris
1510 Fannin Bank Building
Houston, Texas 77025
William J. McNulty
McNulty Trucking Company
182 Danbury Road
New Milford, Connecticut 06776
Gerald Neely
Mid-America Regional Council
20 West 9th Street
Kansas City, Missouri 64105
Bonnie Nejdl
Idaho Sanitary Service
Box 1043
Orafino, Idaho
Emil Nejdl
NADL Enterprises
Box 1043
Orafino, Idaho
F. Newman
Theta Associates, Inc.
15 Spinning Wheel Road
Hinsdale, Illinois
Ronald W. Nickel
Sanitary Transfer S Landfill, Inc.
P. O. Box 20
Delafield, Wisconsin 53018
Albert J. Nugon, Jr.
Waste Lands, Inc.
1793 Julia Street
New Orleans, Louisiana 70113
Robert W. Nugon
Waste Lands, Inc.
1793 Julia Street
New Orleans, Louisiana 70113
Andy Nyby
Best-Way Services, Inc.
P. O. Box 250
Portage, Indiana
Folmer Nyby
Best-Way Services, Inc.
P. O. Box 250
Portage, Indiana 46368
Michael A. Oberman
Waste Age Magazine
6311 Gross Point Road
Niles, Illinois 60648
Ray R. Ohlgren
The Heil Company
3000 West Montana Street
Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53201
Louis Olive
Department of Public Works
P. O. Box 476, Charlotte Amalie
St. Thomas, Virgin Islands 00801
Donald Otter
Waste Management, Inc.
900 Jorie Boulevard
Oak Brook, Illinois 60521
David Pearre
Waste Management, Inc.
900 Jorie Boulevard
Oak Brook, Illinois 60521
186
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Don Post
Dept. of Environmental Control
P. O. Box 94653 State House Station
Lincoln, Nebraska 68509
Eugene L. Pollock
Solid Wastes Management Magazine
461 Eighth Avenue
New York, New York
Richard M. Power
Mass. Dept. of Public Health
19 Daley Avenue
Methuen, Massachusetts 01844
Benjamin C. Pratt
Lee County Public Works
Room 331, Courthouse
Fort Myers, Florida 33902
Jack W. Pschierer
Syracuse Supply Company
Rochester, New York 14423
Michael Puskarich
Buckeye Reclamation Company
P. O. Box 188
Holloway, Ohio 43985
Marshall M. Rabins
Universal By-Products, Inc.
9200 Glenoaks Blvd.
Sun Valley, California 91352
Rhett D. Ragsdale, Jr.
Warner Company
1721 Arch Street
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103
M. D. R. Riddell
Greeley & Hansen
222 South Riverside Plaza
Chicago, Illinois 60606
B. R. Redding
State Board of Health
P. 0. Box 1700
Jackson, Mississippi 39205
Mervin R. Reid
State Division of Health
44 Medical Drive
Salt Lake City, Utah 84113
Clyde J. Roberts
Dept. of Natural Resources
47 Trinity Avenue, S. W.
Atlanta, Georgia 30334
Duane L. Robertson
Department of Health
Helena, Montana
Robert M. Robinson
Division of Health
Box 500
Jefferson City, Missouri 65101
Raymond Rolshoven
State Department of Health
State Capitol Building
Bismarck, North Dakota 58501
John A. Ruf
EPA, Region II
26 Federal Plaza
New York, New York 10007
John B. Russell
American Baler Company
Bellevue, Ohio 44811
L. T. Schaper
Black & Veatch
P. O. Box 8405
Kansas City, Missouri 64114
Earl G. Schmidt
Hagie Manufacturing Company
Clarion, Iowa 50524
Norbert B. Schomaker
National Environmental Research Center
Cincinnati, Ohio 45268
187
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Robert L. Schulz, Director Robert A. Silvachi
Office of Solid Waste Management Prog. s. W. Virginia Regional Health Council
Dept. of Environmental Protection 400 Princeton Avenue
Hartford, Connecticut Bluefield, West Virginia
Bernard Schwartzberg
Gulf Metals Industries, Inc.
P. O. Box 611
Houston, Texas 77001
Charles H. Scott
Control Systems, Inc.
3670 Werk Road
Cincinnati, Ohio 45211
Don Searles
Service Disposal Company
Box 162
Mattoon, Illinois 61938
Fred Segaty
Segaty Sanitation Service
R. D. #2, Box 202
Grove City, Pennsylvania 16127
Carl C. Sexton, President
Los Angeles By-Products Company
1810 East 25th Street
Los Angeles, California 90058
David A. Sharp
Ohio Department of Health
450 East Town, P. O. Box 118
Columbus, Ohio 43216
Harry K. Shepard
Harry K. Shepard, Inc.
37 Chester Road
Springfield, Vermont 05156
Raymond V. Shroba
E S L, Inc.
57 North Ottawa Street
Joliet, Illinois 60431
Ramesh D. Shura
D.C. Dept. of Environment System
415 - 12th Street, N. W.
Washington, D. C. 20001
Robert J. Skidmore
Geauga Disposal, Inc.
P. O. Box 228
Chardon, Ohio 44024
»
Harold Smith *
Waste Management, Inc.
900 Jorie Boulevard
Oak Brook, Illinois 60521
Ora Smith
Office of Solid Waste Management Programs
Environmental Protection Agency
Cincinnati, Ohio 45268
Anita Soto
America's Beautiful Cities
29000 S. Western Avenue' - Suite 405
San Pedro, California 90732
Henry C. Soto
America's Beautiful Cities
29000 S. Western Avenue - Suite 405
San Pedro, California 90732
James V. Stanfa
City Disposal Service
88 Ohl Street
Greenville, Pennsylvania 16125
Henry L. Stewart
CNA Insurance
310 South Michigan Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60604
William E. Stilwell, Jr.
S. C. State Board of Health
2600 Bull Street
Columbia, South Carolina 29201
Orville F. Stoddard
State Department of Health
4210 East llth Avenue
Denver, Colorado 80220
188
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Norman Straub
Segaty Sanitation
R. D. #2
Grove City, Pennsylvania
O. W. Strickland
N. C. State Board of Health
P. O. Box 2091
Raleigh, North Carolina 27602
Zack Strickland
Browning-Ferris
Fannin Bank Building
Houston, Texas
Thomas A. Strickland
Environmental Protection Agency
1421 Peachtree Street, N. E.
Atlanta, Georgia 30309
Dee Stucker
Lenawee Disposal Service
1983 North Ogden Highway
Adrian, Michigan 49221
Alfred Suga
Pacific Concrete & Rock Co., Ltd.
2344 Pahounui Drive
Honolulu, Hawaii 96819
Harry A. Taylor
Public Works Department
1100 Otts Street
Charlotte, North Carolina 28205
John T. Talty
Environmental Protection Agency
5555 Ridge Avenue
Cincinnati, Ohio 45268
Hillis Timmer
Waste Management, Inc.
900 Jorie Boulevard
Oak Brook, Illinois 60521
William H. Town
Fiber Industries, Inc.
Box 10038
Charlotte, North Carolina 28201
Donald A. Townley
EPA, Region VII
1735 Baltimore Avenue
Kansas City, Mirrouri 64108
M. J. Trainor
Rex Chainbelt, Inc.
4701 West Greenfield Avenue
Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53214
Leonard C. Triem
Industrial Building Operation
26th s State Streets
Chicago Heights, Illinois
Wayne D. Trewhitt
Easley & Brassy Corporation
411 Tunnel Avenue
San Francisco, California 94134
Morris G. Tucker
EPA, Region VII
1735 Baltimore Avenue
Kansas City, Missouri 64108
Te'etai Tuitasi
Government of American Samoa
Department of Public Works
American Samoa
John Vanderveld, Jr.
Browning Ferris Industries
Fannin Bank Building
Houston, Texas 77025
Peter Vardy
Emcon Associates
San Jose, California
James M. Veary
Public Works - Refuse Division
City Hall, Basement
Honolulu, Hawaii
Edward L. Vogel
Vogel Disposal Service, Inc.
Mars, Pennsylvania 16046
189
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Charles Walters
L. Robert Kimball, Cons. Engrs.
615 West Highland Avenue
Ebensburg, Pennsylvania 15931
Tom Walters
Walters Landfill, Inc.
250 South Ringgold Street
Boone, Iowa
Grant F. Walton
State Dept. of Environmental Prot.
P. 0. Box 1390
Trenton, New Jersey 08625
Henry E. Warren, Director
Bureau of Land Quality Control
Dept. of Environmental Protection
Augusta, Maine 04330
Avery Wells
State Department of Ecology
Olympia, Washington
Honorable Charles B. Wheeler
Mayor of Kansas City
Kansas City, Missouri 64106
Albert Weitz
Government of American Samoa
GAS, Pago Pago, American Samoa
Roger V. White
U.S. Forest Service - Eng. Bldg. 46
Denver Federal Center
Denver, Colorado 80225
Richard J. Wigh
Regional Services Corporation
3038 Fairlawn Court
Columbus, Indiana 47201
J. Wayne Willey, President
W. Willey Disposal Service
408 Main Street
Belton, Missouri 64012
Thomas O. Work
State Dept. of Public Health
3500 North Logan
Lansing, Michigan 48864
yaSSS
John C. Williams
Cummins Engine Company, Inc.
1000 Fifth Street
Columbus, Indiana 47201
Charles S. Wilson
Sanitas of Rhode Island
Warwick Industrial Drive
Warwick, Rhode Island 02886
John Wilson
Waste Management, Inc.
900 Jorie Boulevard %
Oak Brook, Illinois 60521 >
E. J. Wingerter
National Solid Wastes Management Assoc.
214 - 1145 19th Street, N. W.
Washington, D.C.
James A. Wolfe
USDA - Forest Service
517 Gold Avenue, S. W.
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87101
R. E. Wolfe
Tri-City Construction Company
3001 East 83rd Street
Kansas City, Missouri
Bruce Wormald
State Dept. of Public Health
2151 Berkeley Way
Berkeley, California 94704
Charles V. Wright, Deputy Regional Admin.
EPA, Region VII
1735 Baltimore Avenue
Kansas City, Missouri
Gale A. Wright
EPA, Region VII
1735 Baltimore Avenue t
Kansas City, Missouri 64108
Larry Yust
United Disposal, Inc.
1838 North Broadway
St. Louis, Missouri 63102
Victor E. Ziegler
EPA, Region VII
1735 Baltimore Avenue
Kansas City, Missouri
190
US GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 1973-757-552/1303
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