Landfill construction like a “piece of cake”

October 5, 2006
By Greta Sproul

 Officials at the Juniper Ridge Landfill announced last month that they are in the process of expanding the site off Route 16 in Alton. In order to make space for additional deposits to the landfill, Casella Waste Systems, Inc has begun construction on a 6-acre section of land designated as “cell 3-B.” The construction process is beginning just as the available space in the 4-acre section of the landfill known as “cell 3-A” is nearing its capacity to hold more waste deposits. Construction of the new cell won’t be completed and operational until the first of next year, but Casella spokesman Don Meagher says that cell 3-A still has enough space to hold additional deposits of waste until then.

“There’s been an increase in the amount of waste we’ve been getting,” Meagher said. “That has a lot to do with certain clean-up situations going on at the Naval Air Station in Brunswick and a tannery in South Paris. We’re also taking a lot of waste that would otherwise be going to the Pine Tree Landfill in Hampden.”

Meagher adds that, despite the increased tonnage in waste material over the summer, there hasn’t been any real increase in the number of odor or other complaints noted in the company’s record log. A total of 12 odor complaints were recorded for the month of August, but most of those were primarily related to the excavation process that preceded construction of cell 3-A, says Meagher. He adds that his company encourages such complaints from the people who own land abutting or in the footprint of the landfill.

“When we get a call on the odor hotline, it alerts us to the possibility that something could be wrong,” he said. “We investigate immediately to see if the flows are down or a trench could be open.”

But even as Casella works to expand Juniper Ridge, Meagher says that he is very much aware of the concerns some local residents still have about the nature of the waste that is dumped into the landfill, as well as the process the company uses to verify the contents of that waste material.

“The process is the same one that we use in Hampden,” he said. “Each (landfill) customer checks is given an approval number that they show to the scale-master during the weigh-in process. That approval number lets the scale-master know whether a specific load of waste needs to be analyzed or tested, and how much of it the customer is bringing into the landfill.”

Meagher says that he understands the concerns some people have that unapproved waste might find its way covertly into the landfill, but that there are ways to verify whether or not unapproved materials have been dumped at the site.

“Basically, we work on the honor system because most people are honest about what they bring into the landfill,” he said. “But if someone did dump unapproved waste into the landfill, it would eventually dissolve and the chemicals would work their way into the leachete, which is sampled on a quarterly basis.”

Another  concern that many people have is about the construction of the landfill itself, Meagher says.

“Some people have the idea that we just put waste into a big hole in the ground and cover it over with dirt,” he said. “It’s much more environmentally than that. This may not be the best analogy, considering the subject, but the way the landfill is constructed is similar to the layers in a piece of cake.”

 Meagher explains that the base liner system used in the landfill begins with a six ounce layer of nonwoven geotextile, over which there is a 12 inch layer of underdrain sand and a 24 inch layer of compacted clay. Above those initial three layers, there are four more layers that consist of geosynthetic clay liner, 80 milligrams of HDPE textured geomembrane, and drainage geocomposite. The two top layers of the “landfill cake” are made up of 12 inches of leachete collection sand and another 12 inches of frost protection material known as NITC.

Juniper Ridge Landfill is the first and only state-owned landfill in Maine. It was purchased from Georgia-Pacific in 2004 and began operating last May. It currently employs about 20 people, including four scale-masters, one of whom doubles as a night security person. At present, the landfill is open seven days a week, but that schedule is contingent on changes in the amount of deposits to the site, Meagher says.