tool name

Monday, Jul. 20, 2009

Merced County landfill more than a dumping ground

Cynthia Black stood by a pile of twisted branches, raking out pieces of trash Friday as a groaning water tractor passed by and shot a spray over the dusty ground. Black, 35, is one of the county's 25 workers who deal with much of Merced County's refuse. In her case, that is refuse that comes to the Highway 59 Landfill.

Beside the large piles of green waste near Black, containing everything from pallets and branches to bushes and even stumps, stood a variety of other piles. A mound of chipped wood rose nearby and farther still a stack of the white appliance carcasses rose against the distant mountain skyline. These and other neat piles of concrete and recycling filled the flat ground between two man-made hills which rise above Highway 59 as it makes its way toward Snelling.

These hills have been rising since 1973 when the Highway 59 landfill opened. One of the county's two landfills, the site is a depository and collection point for waste, debris and recycling. While it is operated by the county, the countywide $8.8 million solid waste operation runs itself much like any other business.

That entails the sifting, sorting, grinding, composting and burying the roughly 3,222 tons that come into the site each week, according to the county.

The process of sorting, composting and burying is fairly simple.

At the landfill's entrance, trucks drive up to an attendant, the drivers declare what their cargo contains, which is weighed and charged. Then they either dump their cargo -- recycling or garbage or one of the other items. Then everything is sorted and either hauled away or buried in the landfill.

The ratio of items that come into the 87-acre facility each year, from smallest to largest, is 12,000 tons of recycling, 29,000 tons of green waste and 280,000 tons of garbage, according to county spokeswoman Katie Albertson.

Much of the green waste is chipped and then sent out to a field of man-size furrow-like piles called "wind rows." These piles are turned and left to compost. A huge earth turning machine drives over the rows and mixes the hot earth. Finally it is sold to gardens.

The other items that come here -- appliances, concrete -- are cleaned of heavy metals and other hazards and then hauled away, said site managers.

The recycling, which is dumped by garbage trucks at a fenced-in site, is hauled away by semi trucks to a plant in the Bay Area.

All refuse is taken above the larger of the two hills -- 300 feet high -- and dumped. Then it is compacted by a huge yellow compacting machine with metal teeth-like wheels. The machine weighs more than 120,000 pounds, according to the site's manager. Along side the compactor a huge bulldozer spreads the debris and then eventually covers it with a foot of dirt.

While the site has been expanding for the 16 years that the site supervisor has worked there, Marty Yerrick, said the economic slowdown has hugely decreased the amount of garbage coming into the site. "We did have lines coming out of here," he said of the site before 2006.

Decreased tonnage or not, in this line of work, said Yerrick, you come across all kinds of things. In his time with solid waste, people have found bags of marijuana, dead animals and even a pipe bomb in the piles that they sift through each day.

Reporter Jonah Owen Lamb can be reached at (209) 385-2484 or jlamb@mercedsun-star.com.