My first landfill visit: Badlands Sanitary Landfill

In the Friday early morning on November 15, 2013, I went to the BadLands Sanitary Landfill in Moreno Valley in California. Before I left my home, I could not imagine how big the landfill is, and I also did not expect to see a HUGE landfill. It took around 20 minutes from Riverside City College, and I went there with classmates for carpool. It was cold to be outside.

When I arrived there, I did not really realize that it was landfill. A tour guide came, and all people went some places around landfill such as where trashes are gathering, where they make some energy, and where they separate trashes. I heard about History first. The landfill opened in 1966 as a burn site, but they switched to landfill in 1970 because burning trashes pollute environment. The landfill designated as Class 3 facility by Title 27 California Code of Regulations. The landfill is permitted max tonnage of 4,000 tons per day, and they receive average of 2,200 tons/day. The mountain of trash in landfill was covered by tarp. They can save money by suing Tarp instead of filling with sands. Once landfill filled up with trashes, and there is not any more space, they close. Also nothing goes out of landfill. Everything stays inside except thing that could be recycled. The liner system layer of landfill structures was 7 layers for typical bottom liner system, and 5 layers for typical side slope liner system.

There are also people who are monitoring the landfill, and they get inspection every single month that they are still good to keep landfill. There are several monitoring programs such as national Pollutant Discharge and Elimination System, Groundwater Monitoring, Gas Monitoring, and Gas Collection System. There shouldn’t be any drainage such as hazard, methane, and water. I felt that water leaking is the most important for them to make sure there is not drainage of water, so the other places’ water don’t get any polluted water from the landfill.

They are Not only being careful for drainage, but also paying attention for collecting gas. They collect Methane gas to make energy, and then they sell it to the purchaser, Southern California Edison. The Gas-to-Energy Facility constructed in 2001, and they just made new engine this year. They can produce 1.2 MW/hr. I really did not know that they can make energy from trashes.

I was sometimes standing on the mountain of trashes, and sometimes not. They were expanding the landfill since they need more space. The tour guide said that they are planning to expand more even they are expanding right now. She said that if they get more land, they could use the landfill more than 150years. It was amazing that how fast they fill the land with trashes. However, even if it doesn’t smell and we as a human being can use landfill almost forever for ourselves. We should not throw away everything. They also get something almost new working perfectly fine. It shouldn’t happen. One should try best to reduce, reuse, and recycle.

Here are Links :

http://www.moreno-valley.ca.us/resident_services/waste/landfill.shtml

http://www.rivcowm.org/opencms/landfill_info/pdf/Landfill-TS-FacilityFlyerPDFs/88492-Badlands-Landfill-Flyer.pdf