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A hydraulic tipper dumps a load of garbage Monday at the Apex landfill. The landfill can store the valley’s waste for the next 200 years, according to Republic Services.
Monday, Dec. 7, 2009 | 2 a.m.
Talking Trash: Lessons from a Landfill
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At 12,000 acres, Apex Landfill is the biggest landfill in the country, and it's located just outside Las Vegas. Apex General Manager Mark Clinker shows the dirty journey of trash, from curbs, to the dumping sites at Apex to its methane-forming decomposition.
Apex Regional Landfill
Sun Archives
Beyond the Sun
“The dump” conjures images of broken couches, mounds of garbage, flies, rats, smells so strong they radiate visibly into the air.
But very few Southern Nevadans have seen the region’s main dump. The biggest landfill in the U.S. is tucked away in a narrow valley in the Apex area an hour north of Las Vegas, just off Interstate 15 but not visible from the freeway.
Mountains surround the dump valley, which is etched out into red earth terraces. The garbage is layered like a sheet cake beneath each terrace, and pipes crisscross the land, carrying away the methane generated by the decomposing garbage. Republic Services just announced a plan to convert the methane into electricity by late 2011.
But that energy plant has yet to be built, so for now the place looks like a plastic bag-pocked mining site.
The odor is a clue to its real purpose. It does faintly stink, but not as bad as one might expect, considering it stores nearly 50 million tons of rotting trash. Another 9,000 tons or so rolls in every day. During the height of the construction boom a few years ago the daily average exceeded 15,000 tons.
Today there’s almost no construction waste going to Apex, commercial waste is down and even residential waste has decreased, according to landfill General Manager Mark Clinker.
So this is a place where the recession is doing some good. The less trash sent to the landfill, the longer the landfill stays open. There’s enough space at the 2,200-acre site to store all of the Las Vegas Valley’s waste for the next 200 years, according to Bob Coyle, vice president of government relations for Republic Services.
The landfill is also ever-expanding in a way. Las Vegas Paving comes in and digs out the rock of the surrounding mountains, making way for the terraces of trash that will take their place. The company uses the rock for roadway construction. A Republic Services team comes in after the paving crew and preps the area with a welded toxins shield intended to protect the aquifer, layers of rock and dirt. Then they add vacuum tubes to suck up the methane and pipes to gather the liquid that drains from decomposing trash. Everything is mapped with precise GPS coordinates.
Giant trucks roll in at all hours from transfer stations across the valley. (The transfer stations are where trash from curbside cans and commercial bins are taken.) When it arrives at the landfill, the trash is weighed and taken to the latest dump terrace. The drivers hook their trailers up to tippers that lift the containers 90 degrees in the air, sending a cascade of garbage onto the terrace below. Huge steel-wheeled compactors — the wheels alone are at least 8 feet tall — then chop and compress the trash.
The compactors can work on up to 150,000 square feet of trash at a time, after which bulldozers are brought in to cover it all up with at least six inches of rock and dirt, and start a new terrace. In a 24/7 operation like Apex, that happens about once a week.
The goal is to keep the trash from flying off in the strong winds prevalent in the area.
Tires and plastic grocery bags are the archenemies of landfill employees.
Tires have an uncanny ability to make their way to the surface, and plastic bags are almost impossible to keep down when the trash is being dumped. There are several fences and bag traps around the landfill, but it’s not hard to spot one or two bags soaring for the heavens.
“The day they outlaw those plastic bags I will stand and salute,” Coyle says. “I will be a happy man that day.”
Why is this story relevant ?
Economic slowdown has decreased trash sent to dump ? Jeez Should the president send some economic stimilus to the pigeons out there.. ????
Slow news day???
Regardless, I thought the story interesting.
Every story doesn't have to be relevant to every person to make it interesting enough for someone else to read..is your comment relevant?
Some of you will comment and b*tch about anything and everything.
there is no excuse, for not recycling more of the Las Vegas waste that is sent to the land fill..And Las Vegas and every other place in the u s, should out law those darn plastic bags...we just do not need them....
Good story. If you don't think it is relevant, don't read it. Your light bulb burns dim.
How is this not relevant? One of the signs as to how wasteful (no pun intended) and self-centered out society is is how little we know or care about where our trash is going or what's being done with it.
Good story.
Heck, I thought that tilted trailer was a missile silo... ;^)
If you started launching those into Waziristan, the Taliban would soon have to leave... ;^)
-- saw a cool site; Balkingpoints ; incredible satellite view of earth
From the headline I thought this was another story about CityCenter.
If you think the story is irrelevant (which I do not), but if you think it IS irrelevant, then the only thing less relevant would be a comment pointing out that the article is not relevant.
Which makes this comment ...
And that goes for every on-line knuckleheaded comment about news pieces in the Las Vegas Sun. Obviously if you read it from beginning to end and commented on it, IT MUST BE RELEVANT. Why else would you take the time to comment???
Remenber one man's trash is another man's treaure.
Did you see that story on "Dirty Jobs" with Mike Rowe where the subject was casino food recycling? lol (The leftover food on buffet plates is collected and used to feed pigs)
Hey "environprotector", what's up with your ironic name. I see you denying global warming (AGW) and now complaining about the relevance of an article talking about a landfill. You should change your name to environdestroyer if you keep talking that trash.
Sportyyetpractical, you are hilarious! I truly laughed out loud at your comment.
On a more serious note, though, I agree with getting rid of the plastic bags. They really are a waste and a nuisance. The other thing is that it would be great if Republic could come up with the one recycling bin, one regular bin method that is used in Arizona and California (and probably some other places). This allows you to put your recycables in one really big receptacle with a lid, and the machine at the other end sorts it all out. It's really cheaper and easier in the long run for everyone. I for one think the current three bin system encourages more trash being blown around and is too small to really make much of a difference, plus it adds way more work for the garbage people. My bins are always overflowing, even when I crush everything.
When we used this system in Phoenix for the short time we lived there, we had very little "regular" trash.
Just a thought, Republic. Also the trucks they use for this system have an arm that automatically picks up the bins, so you can man your trucks with one man, thereby saving a huge amount in labor costs. The man doesn't even have to get out of the truck. The second person could then be re-assigned to the recycling operation, instead of the landfill operation. Good for the company, good for the employees, good for the customers, good for the environment. Hmmmm.