The crew of the Winneshiek County Landfill has a big job to do. Pictured front (l-r): Meghan Scheidel and TJ Schissel. Back: Kyle Frank, Landon Ashbacher and Logan Schnuelle. (submitted photo)
By Kate Klimesh,
“You put the trash on the curb, and it goes away,” says TJ Schissel, Winneshiek County Sanitary Landfill Manager. But there’s a lot more to it than that. A lot. In fact, even though there is approximately 24 years of life left in the Winneshiek County Sanitary Landfill currently, the County’s Solid Waste agency just approved the latest landfill closure plan, and holds a grand total of around $7.5 million in excess funds to mitigate the closure when the time comes. And not one penny is tax funded.
The Winneshiek County Landfill is also one of only 44 in the whole state, and provides service to Winneshiek, Howard, and Clayton counties, as well as the city of Postville.
The Landfill site
The landfill itself is a parcel of ground approximately 200 acres, established in 1974 on the current site by a private company. Winneshiek County Solid Waste Agency purchased the landfill in 1991, and it’s been run by the county as a separate entity ever since. For the county, it is a business-type operation, which means they operate solely on their earnings from landfill charges and is not budgeted any tax dollars at all.
Currently 36 acres are in use for landfill, with one active cell being actively deposited into, cultivated and built every day, and four other cells which have been closed. The four closed cells were early, clay-lined cells that have been lined in heavy plastic per state specifications, covered in a layer of dirt and planted in native wildflowers and prairie plants to keep the soil in place. (The view from there is simply gorgeous!)
There’s two leachate (garbage juice) lagoons to collect excess liquid from the landfill’s cell and encourage decomposition by ensuring some liquid is being recirculated through the cell layers. If there is a foot of leachate collected in the plastic liner, it can create too much weight and pressure. Oversaturation can lead to stress on the liner’s integrity, so it is carefully monitored.
The landfill utilizes mobile cannon sprinklers with 120-foot range in planned locations to circulate and filter the landfill’s leachate over the plastic lined cell 5 to encourage further filtration of the leachate through the top soil, plants and garbage, and to encourage as much further settling and decomposition of buried materials as is possible. These sprinklers are moved around cell 5 of the landfill according to a plan that ensures the most efficient recirculation.
Cell five is a plastic-lined, 36-acre cell where the current trash collected from the curb ends up. More on that later, but Schissel noted, “we are building that cell every day as material comes in, so it’s a constantly changing landscape.”
There are also methane vents around the landfill, pulling out the gas from decomposing garbage to avoid potential migration of the gas either into neighboring fields or our buildings.
The Landfill site has Trout River running through it, and maintains a 500-foot buffer between it and the active landfill cell. “But, we don’t want to get any closer than that anyway, as it’s in a flood plain, and we can’t build where it could flood out,” Schissel noted. “Besides, it’s a trout stream. We don’t want to crowd that.”
The Landfill also has over 40 monitoring wells that keep daily tabs on both shallow and deep bedrock water quality to ensure there’s no impact to the water table. They also have heat sensing cameras installed to detect any areas that may begin to build up excess heat to prevent potential fires. Landfills cannot burn waste per state and federal regulation – not even by accident.
There’s a small office and a weigh station, where trash collection vehicles are weighed and invoiced, currently $72 per ton. This is where folks can drop off larger items and electronics for a fee as well.
The Operation
“First and foremost, we try hard to be good neighbors and make sure we don’t have trash blowing away,” noted Schissel. To effect this cleanliness, the active cell area being deposited into has blocker and catcher fences 22 feet wide and nine feet tall to keep wind from taking off with papers and help catch the trash. They also build berms around the active collection area to help block the wind.
“Picking up visual trash is a daily job for us out here too. Anything the blockers or catchers miss we pick up at the end of the day.” With 40 million pounds of trash deposited each year on average, that’s almost 55 tons of trash coming into the landfill each and every day.
Trash comes in from three counties and Postville, but the planning ahead of time that makes that possible is staggering. “We think in terms of years here, not days. Everything we do is part of planning for the next year, or in five years. The more efficient we are in building the landfill every day, the more years we can add to its life.”
The crew plans the locations of the leachate cannon sprinklers for the next year and beyond. The sprinklers are taken out each fall, and installed in the planned location each Spring. They have a 120-foot radius, and visually, one can see the settling that occurs around the sprinklers during a season. They are then moved to encourage settling in other areas as well the next year.
The crews are continuously building roads to the current collection area, and planning the progress of the collection area to ensure a road is available, building berms and moving the home-made blocker fence sections to minimize airborne trash. “Some of the roads we have in place today sit on up to 100 feet of garbage below them, and as we build the landfill out each day, we make sure to stick to the planned areas to maximize efficiency of the space we have. Our compactor we run is a lifesaver. Without that running, we’d only have about 15 years left until we’d be full. It saves that much space.”
As they build the roads and work the cells with incoming trash, Schissel and his crew are monitoring the ground water, thermal and visual cameras of the grounds, and checking the leachate cannon sprinklers for function. “We run the sprinklers daily during the dry and warm months of the year, and plan the roads between the sprinklers,” Schissel noted.
The crews also plant wildflower seeds, along with clover and rye to keep the erosion to a minimum after they layer black dirt to a compacted area. The organic matter assists the decomposition of other materials.
More regulation means more planning
Schissel explained “I’ve been working here for 18 years, and I never knew all that it would entail. We are not only regulated by the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Agency, but we have state laws and codes that have changed over the years.”
One of those regulations is planning the closure and ensuring there are adequate funds to seal off any active cells, mitigate any final issues and continue to monitor the site for a minimum of 30 years. That’s why the Solid Waste Agency recently approved the closure plan, and assured the total of $7.5 million in excess funds to perform the closure plan, even though it’s now around 24 years out. “It’s Iowa Code that you have to know what you’re going to do when you’re done,” Schissel added.
“We try to set aside around $400,000 to 500,000 each year into the closure account, because nothing gets cheaper. We weren’t able to last year, because we put $800,000 into equipment, but barring that, we do.”
This year, they’ll put a layer of black dirt on the cells scheduled for recirculation of the leachate next year, and sow seeds to hold the dirt in place. It encourages settling, which mostly happens in that first year.
History
The biggest legislative change for landfills came in 2008, when Iowa determined that a four-foot thick clay liner wasn’t going to cut it anymore, and they required a plastic liner for landfill cells. “That took out about half the landfills in the state, they just shut.”
Winneshiek County asked for a variance at that point. They were granted to fill the four-foot clay lined cell for four more years, until 2012. They then operated on the plastic lined cell they had built in August of 1996 in the meantime, and let the other cell sit idle for a minimum of three years.
“In 2015, we figured we have maybe six years of life left, and there’s a minimum of five years notice we would have had to give, so we scrambled a bit and planned an expansion of a new cell in 2016. We’re still on just 36 acres, so we didn’t change the landfill footprint, but gained years of life. We’re rural, so we had to really keep the landfill here.”
Schissel reported, “We have another 14 feet to go on the one side of cell five, but by the lagoon, we have at least 80 foot of height to go before we reach maximum elevation. We don’t want to go too high up because we’re near the airport. The DNR and FAA worry about attracting birds that close to the airport. Again, we try to be good neighbors.”
Dealing in height, compaction and years is the life of the landfill. With thoughtful planning and detailed consideration, expected to last the next 24 years.
How to add years to its life
“Recycling for us is huge,” said Schissel emphatically. “Keeping plastics, cardboard and such out of the landfill, that only saves us years of life.”
The county’s solid waste agency actually supports a full-time position to encourage recycling and help educate the public about it. Evan Neubauer is the Waste Reduction and Recycling Educator with Winneshiek County Conservation. Evan spends most of his time speaking with students and the public about the importance of recycling and composting.
The staff at the Winneshiek County Recycling Center handles approximately 2,500 tons (5,000,000 pounds) of material in the course of a year, sorting plastic and metal three days a week. This represents 12.5 percent of the landfills annual deposit, which adds up to saving a year of landfill life every eight years. The recycling center helps the community extend the life of the landfill, and sells the recyclable materials to support it’s operating costs as much as is possible.
So, how can a Winneshiek County resident help extend the life of the landfill? By utilizing the recycling center to its fullest and ensuring only recyclable materials are put into bins. Take a fresh look at the waste a household can generate, and see where conscious choices can be made to reduce that waste. The process of recycling is a resource in itself, and Neubauer offered several tips to ensure efficiency in reclaiming materials that avoid the landfill.
Neubauer stated, “Recycling has its own set of regulations and best practices for safety to work within, so it’s important for the public to be aware that processing garbage at the recycling center is challenging and time consuming. Employees must sort it out from the recyclable materials and place it in a dumpster. Once the trash is collected, it is transported to the landfill, where it should have been sent previously. Ultimately, throwing trash in a recycling bin is just a more expensive way to send it to the landfill, costing extra fuel for transport and more carbon. One example is soft plastic bags, they are not recyclable in Winneshiek County.”
“For safety of the staff, it is also important that people do not bag their recyclable materials before disposing into the recycling bins. Bagged materials are sent to the landfill because the recycling team cannot identify the items, chemicals or sharp objects inside the bag, and treat them as dangerous. Plastic beverage containers that contain liquid are also sent to the landfill, so containers must be empty when they are tossed in a recycling bin. Folks can also remove their bottle caps from plastic bottles when they recycle them to ensure maximum efficiency in compacting the materials for sale,” he added.
The Winneshiek County Recycling website, winneshiekwaste.com, has a full list of recyclable materials accepted at the recycling center.
Neubauer’s tone brightened at the opportunity for composting as a way to extend the landfill’s life, which is not listed on the recycling guide since they don’t accept organic matter at the local center.
“The Iowa DNR published a 2022 IA Statewide Material Characterization Study back in October of 2022 and found that 21.6% of the audited waste was made up of organics,” Neubauer noted. “For this reason, composting in our community is essential. Any food waste that reaches the landfill will take a long time to break down and create methane in the process. By composting, more waste can be diverted from the landfill and will turn into a useful soil amendment that can help local gardens and lawns.”
Winneshiek County Conservation staff recently collaborated with the City of Decorah and Luther College to distribute over 120 home composters to community residents Earth Day Festival to divert food waste from the landfill. “Most people want to do their part and create less trash. WCC is planning to conduct additional compost trainings, so be on the lookout for these opportunities. If you are interested in a compost bin for your home, or are unfamiliar with the process and want to learn more about composting, please visit winneshiekwaste.com/compost.”
The bottom line to add years to the landfill’s life:
Reduce waste from your home purchases as much as possible. Buy products with recyclable packaging, or minimal packaging. Purchase fewer disposable products that add up quickly in the course of a week. (Did you know the plastic-coated paper milk/juice cartons are NOT recyclable, but clean, clear plastic jugs marked #1 or #2 are?) Hard plastics labeled with #3, #4 ,#5 ,#6 , #7 or those that are unmarked go to the landfill.
Be a thoughtful and thorough recycler. Ensure you are only recycling what can be accepted, in ways that are efficient for the staff. No garbage, glass, nails, no liquids, hazardous materials or bagged materials in recycling bins.
Consider composting food scraps and organic material. Or find a friend or neighbor who may be interested in food scraps for chickens, goats or farm animals. There are great resources for composting right here in the community.
It’s a worthwhile endeavor thinking about ways we all can help extend the life of one of Iowa’s 44 landfills right here in our community. There’s simply so much that happens – and is impacted – beyond the curb.
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