Facing dwindling room for residential and commercial trash in its landfill, the Atlantic County Utilities Authority has been employing engineering solutions in recent years, including building a retaining wall six stories high that will eventually span a mile. Operators for the ACUA started employing these techniques to extend the life of landfill.
Instead of piling the trash up in a pyramid shape as in the past, the current landfill procedure is to stack the garbage vertically up against a wall, which contains the refuse, said Rick Dovey, ACUA president. “The wall was actually originally permitted in 2006, so we had this on the books for a while knowing that sometime in the future, we would need it. So, a few years back, we started with phase one, and now, we are into phase two,” said Thomas Ganard, the ACUA’s chief engineer.
Expanding the life of the landfill is accomplished through a system called a mechanically stabilized earthen berm, also called an MSE wall, said Sara Verrillo, the ACUA’s chief customer relationship manager. Phase one of the project began in 2018 and was finished in 2019, Ganard said. Grass will grow on the outside of the wall to help keep it from eroding, which can be seen on the phase one wall.