2001: A Trash Odyssey

Fresh Kills on Staten Island is the largest operating landfill in the world and the only active landfill in New York City, processing some 13,000 tons of New Yorkers’ trash every day. That garbage has turned the Fresh Kills site into a mountain of trash that towers nearly 450 feet in the air, almost high enough to interfere with air traffic, according to the Association of Science-Technology Centers and the Smithsonian Institution. (The two maintain a web-based fact sheet on the landfill.) Were she placed on Fresh Kills, the Statue of Liberty would be completely covered, with 25 feet of trash to spare.

Two of Fresh Kills’ original four sections are closed; the remaining two will stop taking garbage on Dec. 31, 2001. That means that New York must find a new home for its trash, and that is causing big problems for the Big Apple.

In preparation for the inevitable, New York is looking at expanding its recycling program and revisiting the idea of incineration. The city also is hoping that some of its neighbors will pitch in.

Mayor Rudy Giuliani thinks that neighborly assistance is only fair, since, as one of the world’s most important tourist and business destinations, New York – and its trash – pretty much belong to everyone. That idea, however, does not play in Virginia, Pennsylvania and New Jersey,

three states that New York is asking for help. In New Jersey, city, county and state officials quickly and definitively discarded the idea of building an enormous new transfer station; Virginia has passed legislation restricting garbage shipment and dumping; and Pennsylvania is making a concerted effort to cap the size of its landfills. So, with two and a half years left to think about it, New York is making decisions.

Looking for solutions While city officials attempt to work things out with their neighbors, the Fresh Kills Task Force, appointed by the mayor and Gov. George Pataki, has suggested reorienting the city’s strategies toward more intensive recycling and waste reduction – tactics that might include economic incentives and composting food and yard refuse. The city already has a proud tradition of recycling, with curbside collection of newspapers, magazines, corrugated cardboard, telephone books, PETE and HDPE plastic, metal, glass and foil for all of its 7.3 million residents.

Basing its findings on a report by Sadat Associates, a local consultant hired by the city, the task force determined that New York could do better. It set up a timetable for the reduction of trash going to Fresh Kills, anticipating that, by 2000, the city will be sending just 4,000 tons per day. Its recommendations prompted Giuliani to add $6 million to the city’s recycling budget for education and pilot expansion programs. (The task force also recommended expanding the city’s food and yard waste composting operations, which currently involve two facilities, one each at Fresh Kills and on Riker’s Island.)

Giuliani’s office did its part with a mayoral directive that requires all city agencies to institute waste prevention strategies, including double-sided copying, using e-mail rather than paper for the review and editing o f documents and message-sending, and faxing through computer when possible. (City agencies and institutions produce about 320,000 tons of waste a year, 8 percent of the city’s total, according to the task force report.) For nonrecyclables, the task force recommended exporting waste from existing marine transfer stations and constructing borough-based transfer stations that would allow each borough to determine its own waste disposal strategies. An idea to build upstate landfills to accommodate New York’s trash faces bitter opposition, and Giuliani has agreed that it is a poor option at best.

Even if upstaters welcomed the city’s trash, logistics are troublesome. In fact, New York State lost 87 percent of its landfills between 1986 and 1994, many to stronger federal standards, according to a 1997 article in the Village Voice. Still, upstate landfills are not operating at capacity, and the city might be able to cut a deal that would benefit both areas.

Waste reduction and shipment upstate, however, cannot begin to answer New York’s garbage problem. That is where New Jersey, Virginia and Pennsylvania come in.

Telling New York ‘No’ New York sends 2.9 million tons of commercial waste a year to its neighbors, according to the Village Voice. The city has not had to export residential waste since the 1930s, but, when Fresh Kills closes, that will change.

The paper notes that the city expects eventually to send all its trash (4.3 million tons a year) elsewhere. That, of course, depends on the willingness of the elsewheres to take it, and they are not feeling particularly generous.

Giuliani did not help matters by insisting that other states (he mentioned Virginia by name) should be thrilled to have New York’s garbage. His comments pushed Virginia legislators to pass laws limiting the amount of out-of-state garbage they would permit in their landfills. More importantly, it prompted them to ban garbage barge traffic on their waterways.

Currently, the city’s department of sanitation collects trash from residences in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens. That trash is carted to marine transfer stations located in each precinct. From there, it is loaded onto 300-foot barges, covered with nets to keep it from flying into the water, and transported to Fresh Kills. Garbage from Staten Island’s homes is trucked straight to the landfill.

As part of the closure plan, New York officials propose building three new transfer stations: one in Red Hook in Brooklyn, and one each in Newark and Carteret, N.J. From those stations, the trash would be moved via train and barge to out-of-state destinations. If New York’s neighbors were to deny the barges access to their waterways, the strain on the city would be enormous. (For example, officials have estimated that 5,900 tons of trash per day would be shipped on barges to Newark and Carteret. That is the equivalent of 800 full garbage trucks. New York’s already congested streets would be taxed to the extreme by 800 additional garbage trucks.)

Citing environmental concerns, Virginia Gov. James Gilmore has said that he does not want New York’s trash floating down his state’s rivers. He signed legislation banning such shipments as of July 1 and vows to fight any challenge from Giuliani, who maintains that the ban is an unconstitutional infringement on interstate commerce. Some Virginians, however, argue that “barging” the trash is the most environmentally sound method of getting it where it needs to be.

“Barging does represent the safest and most economical method of moving trash,” says Charles City County Administrator Ken Chandler, whose county is in the process of building a barge facility that would be the only one in Virginia constructed specifically to handle municipal solid waste. “I really don’t understand the big deal about garbage. We’ve got barges carrying No. 2 fuel oil and hydrochloric acid going up and down the James River right now. People say those things are okay because they contribute tothe economic vitality of Virginia towns. But I don’t see what their contribution is that is not true of municipal solid waste.”

Still, Virginia is unlikely to back down, especially in the wake of several high-profile garbage incidents. One of those involved medical waste discovered in garbage from Brooklyn that had been illegally dumped in a Virginia landfill. The waste was discovered only after an eight-state waste inspection was organized.

Last year, garbage barges on the James River suffered several recorded, albeit relatively small, spills. And, in a highly visible mishap, a truck driver apparently suffered a heart attack and hit a Virginia interstate median, spilling New York’s trash across the road. Gilmore has plenty of company in his opposition to New York garbage. Inspired by the Virginia legislation, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Maryland are considering taking similar action. With an election year coming up, no one wants to be seen as pro-New York trash.

Nevertheless, the opposition to out-of-state dumping is not unanimous. Even in Virginia, the issue has two solid sides. In Charles City County, for instance, a 934-acre landfill has been accepting New York’s garbage for years. “Host fees” collected from New York and other out-of-state venues account for more than $4 million of the county’s annual $16 million budget, according to a story in the New York Daily News, and residents do not want to lose them. (Forty to 50 percent of the 3,000 tons of trash per day buried at the Charles City County landfill is from New York.)

According to the Daily News, proceeds from the acceptance of Big Apple trash have paid for a brand new K-12 school campus and a property tax cut in the largely poor county. Not surprisingly, county residents are not exactly in favor of Gilmore’s hard line. “The issue will go to court under the interstate commerce clause [of the Constitution],” Chandler says. “The argument is that Virginia landfills should be for Virginia trash. But that is kind of like being from Wisconsin and saying, ‘Because of the amount of cheese we produce here, you can’t bring a Kraft single into the state.'”

Chandler also argues that the economic benefit provided by landfills is being ignored. “Ten years ago, landfills were being touted as revenue generators,” he says. “That revenue depends on out-of-state trash shipments. When you produce these artificial caps on how much trash can be shipped into a landfill, you are limiting your own economic development, because, for economic development, you need disposal space.”

And Chandler is not the only local official in favor of handling New York’s waste. In a letter to Staten Island Borough President Guy Molinari, Harrisburg, Pa., Mayor Stephen Reed said his city was ready, willing and immediately able to take New York City garbage.

Keeping a promise While virtually everyone in the New York area is at least somewhat interested in what happens to Fresh Kills, Staten Islanders have the biggest stake in the closure process. For them, the landfill has been a sore point for 50 years. Molinari knows that better than most.

“Fifty years ago, my father and a local minister led the movement to try to stop Fresh Kills from happening,” he says. “Three generations of Molinaris have been fighting that garbage dump.”

Originally, New York promised that it would use the dump for two or three years, then turn it into a park, Molinari says. That still rankles the locals. “We have some of the most precious wildlife feeding grounds here,” Molinari notes. “It is an abomination to think that some of the most effective wetlands in the nation have been used and abused like this. It violates every environmental concept we know.”

The loss of the wetlands, though, pales in comparison to the health problems the landfill has caused in the local population. “We have one of the highest asthma rates in the country,” Molinari says. “The higher the mountain grew, the more the landfill affected the people. Odors carry much longer distances.”

When the landfill was sited – and for much of its operational life – Staten Island had no political voice, and, therefore, no real way to protest, according to Molinari. As the least populous of New York’s boroughs, its complaints fell mostly on deaf ears, both within New York City and within the state general assembly.

In fact, for a number of reasons, chief among them Fresh Kills, Staten Islanders have voted to secede from the city. (That is unlikely to happen, because they need general assembly approval and cannot get it, primarily because the island is now the fastest growing county in New York – and one of the most affluent.)

Molinari credits Giuliani with defusing the situation by following through on long-time proposals to close the landfill. “He stepped forward and said, ‘It’s time to move ahead,'” Molinari says, although he does acknowledge that unkept promises have made Staten Islanders cynical about pronouncements from the city.

The costs No matter who wins in the New York vs. The World garbage battle, someone somewhere is going to be paying more money. It is estimated that closing Fresh Kills and providing reasonable alternatives for the disposal of the city’s garbage will cost in the neighborhood of $6 billion.

Released in December 1998, the official state closure plan proposed construction of the three barge unloading facilities in Brooklyn and New Jersey, and truck-to-container barge or rail export facilities at Fresh Kills and in the Bronx. Currently, garbage is transferred to one of seven marine transfer facilities and barged to Fresh Kills.

The sanitation department’s closure evaluation committee recommended that the city negotiate with private vendors for 20-year disposal service agreements that would handle waste going from Queens and Manhattan to upstate New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Illinois, and from Brooklyn to Virginia. The Bronx would handle its own trash. In essence, each borough would be responsible for collection of its own garbage. That, in fact, is one of the key advantages of its plan, according to the city.

New York’s four non-Staten Island boroughs, however, are not really sure they want to handle their own trash and participate in what former New York Mayor Abraham Beame called “the equitable sharing of pain.”

The process Meanwhile, closing Fresh Kills is not simply a matter of stopping garbage deliveries. Final cover has been placed on 90 acres, and a leachate collection and containment system has been built. That system contains an underground cutoff wall that minimizes groundwater entering the landfill and contains the leachate.

Collection wells and drains have been installed, and the collected leachate will be piped to a transfer main that will pump it to a treatment plant that can handle 1 million gallons per day. Designed to treat ammonia, organic matter and several metals, the plant is continually monitored.

Leachate, however, is not the only problem. Fresh Kills is responsible for 5.7 percent of the methane gas produced in the United States, 1.8 percent of that produced in the world, according to Molinari.

Collection and control of that gas has been an ongoing concern. The landfill gas (LFG) project now under way consists of the installation and operation of a gas collection and flare system that collects the gas in pipes and transfers it to a flaring station at the perimeter of each landfill section. The two flares at each section burn the gas. Eventually, the flaring system will be replaced by an active recovery program under which collected gas will be refined into pipeline quality gas to produce energy on Staten Island. The recovery program operates on a 20-year concession agreement between the city and GSF Energy, a Texas-based energy provider.

The leachate and LFG projects will continue for the 30-year post-closure period. Then, Staten Islanders will have to decide what to do with the land. Options include development of the wetlands site as parkland, as well as commercial projects. Molinari says the island has been talking with the New York City Municipal Arts Society and others about potential beneficial reuse. Additionally, officials are planning to build roads through the area to solve congestion problems.

Whatever happens, the closure will delight Staten Islanders. “The problem with Fresh Kills is that it’s so well known,” Molinari says. “We’re known for two things: the Fresh Kills landfill and the Staten Island Ferry. The ferry is free and gives you a great view of the Statue of Liberty. We don’t mind being know for that.”

Officials in Alamance County, N.C, knew that the county’s Austin Quarter Road Landfill needed to be expanded. However, that presented a problem. The clay that served as a liner material when the landfill was originally constructed in 1993 was in short supply, and state law did not allow the county to use an alternate liner system. State law, they reasoned, would have to be changed.

The landfill’s initial 16-acre cell had been permitted for operation in 1994 using a composite liner that consists of a synthetic geomembrane overlying a minimum layer of 2-foot thick clay. That clay, while very effective as a liner material, is difficult to find in the Piedmont region of North Carolina, and much of what was available had been used in the construction of the landfill’s first cell. Little was left when the county planned its 8-acre expansion.

The county had three options in building the 8-acre expansion: excavating large areas of the site and mining the clay from surface deposits; amending the soil with bentonite; or using an alternate liner system. The first two options were considered expensive and time-consuming.

Federal regulations allow for alternate liners if they meet strict performance criteria and perform as well as the Standard Composite Liner the county had used in its original construction. Other states had shown that double liners or the use of Geosynthetic Clay Liners (GCLs) in composite liners could meet the appropriate standards, but North Carolina had not taken advantage of that option.

(A GCL consists of a layer of powdered bentonite clay attached to one or two layers of geotextiles. The 1/4-inch liner comes on rolls and has a permeability about 100 times lower than that of the clay in the Standard Composite Liner.)

In 1997, former Alamance County Manager Robert Smith submitted a request to the local legislative delegation for a bill authorizing North Carolina counties to use GCLs. The resulting legislation passed overwhelmingly, and the rule change went into effect in July 1998. The timing was critical, since the first of the new cells was to be built in 1998.

Meanwhile, the county’s engineer, New York-based Hazen & Sawyer, had submitted a permit application for the new cell that included a GCL. A comprehensive Construction Quality Assurance (CQA) program during construction is expected to ensure that the liner system is built in accordance with project requirements and solid waste regulations.

Alamance County expects the GCL to help it save money by: * eliminating the need for of bentonite amendment; * decreasing clearing, excavation and hauling costs because of the use of on-site soil; * speeding construction time; and * reducing the need for subgrade preparation during installation. The county estimates its cost savings at $420,000 – about $50,000 per acre of landfill. For future expansions over the next 20 years, savings could exceed $2.5 million.

The rest of the state has taken notice. By the end of 1999, 75 percent of the 42 new lined landfills are expected to use alternative composite liners at a cost savings of more than $13 million.

The Craighead County (Ark.) Solid Waste Disposal Authority processes and hauls between 250 and 300 tons of commercial and residential waste every day. About a year ago, that waste bottlenecked at the county’s transfer facility because of an aging 10-cubic-yard compactor.

An average of 70 collection trucks unload into the facility every day. Once the debris arrives at the station, a massive, rubber-tired front-end loader spreads the mixed refuse, and workers sort through it to remove improperly discarded trash such as chemicals and car tires.

Recyclables, like vehicle batteries, plastics and glass, are recovered from the mix. The remaining trash is then pushed into a hopper, fed into the compactor and transferred into transfer trailers for hauling. To keep things running smoothly, the county must haul 15 compacted loads daily.

The facility fell behind when, because of the compactor’s age, waste began clogging the chute from the hopper. Workers were spending so much time unclogging the jams that drivers were working overtime to keep their trucks moving to the landfill. At the same time, the county’s 80,000 residents were discarding greater amounts of trash. “We were getting much larger flows of trash into the facility, so we had to do something to handle the increased volume,” says Guy Enchelmayer, the authority’s executive director.

Craighead County’s solution was a custom-built, 15-cubic-yard compactor from J.V. Manufacturing, Springdale, Ark. Since its installation, the authority has reduced its loading times from 30 minutes-per-trailer to 10. Additionally, the compactor’s large chute keeps trash from getting clogged.

A hydraulic truck hookup system secures the trailer and eliminates its tendency to push away from the compactor as it is being packed. Previously, the driver and two workers were necessary for that task. Altogether, the station has reduced its compaction cycle time by 26 percent.