A career in Landfill Engineering can be very rewarding, but it’s not all fun and games.

Adam Jochelson, P. E.

 

Labor Day 2010 was pretty memorable. I took advantage of the long weekend to visit San Francisco (one of my favorite cities) and attend a very good friend’s wedding. Travelling back from the west coast got me home kind of late, and I had just put my head on the pillow when the phone rang. I remember looking at the clock and thinking who could be calling at 11:45 p.m. on a holiday. It was the landfill security guard—we had a problem. Thirty minutes later, I was at McCommas Bluff coordinating the activities of my operator team—all of us prepared to spend the whole night protecting our facility from potential disaster.

 

So far, we’ve only talked about the good aspects of working as a Landfill Engineer. So much so that you may have started thinking that it’s all fun and games, and that there are no downsides. This is, of course, not true. As with any endeavor worth pursuing, assuming the role of Landfill Engineer will at some point force you to clear some unpleasant hurdles. Sometimes you’ve got to put out some fires—literally.

 

Fires can start at landfills in any number of ways. Sometimes, flammable waste can become trapped in tight spots in or near the engine compartments of the dozers or compactors. The intense heat can ignite these wastes. Of course, these vehicles have fire suppression systems with automatic triggers that will douse the flames upon detection. On rare occasions, even these systems can be overwhelmed resulting in migration of the fire away from the engine compartment and possibly catching the working face alight. If that happens, the fire can then spread quickly because waste from residential and commercial sources (municipal solid waste or MSW) contains a lot of flammable fuel, like paper and wood. Furthermore, over time, microbial activity breaks down buried waste in an anaerobic process that releases gaseous byproducts, much of which is also flammable.

 

Common Causes: Cooking and Chemistry

By far the most common cause of landfill fires is hidden sources of ignition buried in arriving loads. In fact, landfills that accept MSW make significant efforts to educate the general public regarding ways they can help avoid landfill fires by exercising care in what they discard. One potential fire hazard often ends up delivered to landfills in garbage trucks right after major holidays associated with large gatherings and outdoor grilling—think Memorial, Independence, and Labor Days. Turns out, it can be difficult to be sure that hot coals are completely extinguished after they have performed the cooking duties for the day. A smoldering ember can lay dormant under layers of garbage, in a pocket of space with insufficient oxygen to support an actual fire, for several days. Then, when it tumbles out of the back of the garbage truck at the landfill and becomes exposed to air once again, flames can reignite. Dry and windy conditions can exacerbate this risk. Thus, landfill operators must be particularly vigilant throughout the summer months, especially in hot and arid regions.

 

People can take precautions to ensure that cooking coals are doused well before they dispose of them. However, some chemicals that may seem innocuous when placed in your trash bin can become fire hazards when mixed with other incompatible materials. If you recall your high school chemistry class, you may remember that acids react with bases in a process labeled exothermic, meaning releasing heat. This can be used for fun by mixing vinegar (a weak acid) with baking soda (a weak base) in a tube and watching it gently bubble over—a common tactic to make science fair volcanos “erupt.” However, if you decide to throw away some extra pool chemicals on the same day your neighbor disposes of some unused household cleaning products, your muriatic acid can combine with the lye in her drain cleaner in a much more vigorous fashion that can release enough heat to be a significant fire hazard at the landfill.

 

These kinds of interactions may seem unlikely, but chemical fires occur at landfills more often than you might think, and putting them out can be one of the most arduous and dangerous tasks undertaken by landfill staff. The risk is such that federal standards require every landfill to include a Fire Protection Plan as part of its permit. In this plan, an operator must demonstrate the ability to extinguish fires expeditiously. Avoiding fires in the first place is, of course, the best way to fight them—as old Ben Franklin put it, an ounce of prevention is, indeed, worth a pound of cure.

 

Ten-Minute Rule?

Because no amount of caution can completely eliminate the risk of a fire at a landfill, Texas law addresses actions to take in the event of a fire, including the following direction (from Section 129 of Chapter 330 of Title 30 of the Texas Administrative Code [30TAC330.129]): “If a fire occurs that is not extinguished within 10 minutes of detection, the commission’s regional office must be contacted immediately after detection, but no later than four hours by telephone, and in writing within 14 days with a description of the fire and the resulting response.”

 

The obvious implication here is that if a fire at a landfill burns for less than 10 minutes after detection, then it did not actually occur. Although a fire should never be considered part of normal operations, the Texas regulations recognize the difference between a routine fire (extinguished almost immediately) and a serious fire (that can endanger human health and the environment). Indeed, most fires at landfills burn for only a minute or two because well-trained operators smother and extinguish them right away. Two incidents in the almost 10 years I spent at McCommas Bluff required me to make the reports to the TCEQ’s regional office. The second, I’ve described briefly above. The first occurred just 5 months earlier. For their actions fighting that fire, which burned very noticeably for nearly three days, I nominated my coworkers for a citywide Environmental Stewardship Award. Because they were not selected, their story of courage and commitment has remained mostly unknown. I’d like to share it today.

 

April 25, 2010

Protect Human Health and the Environment—that’s the primary goal of every member of staff at McCommas Bluff Landfill. For the most part, this entails pretty standard workday activities, like directing customer traffic to appropriate locations, depositing waste in the proper spot, providing adequate cover for the waste, and cleaning up any stray garbage or spilled materials. However, some occasions demand performance beyond the normal call of duty.

 

Sunday, April 25, 2010, was one such occasion. Sundays typically only require security duty (being an off day for the landfill).  However, on this particular Sunday night, a group of equipment operators responded with valor to avert a potential catastrophe.  It all started at about 6 p.m. that evening when the security agent called 9-1-1 to report flames atop the landfill. An overflow stockpile of brush (collected as a result of the heavy snow storms in February) had spontaneously ignited. By the time operators and firefighters arrived to battle the fire, an estimated 2 acres of the 20-ish acre stockpile was burning. If not contained, a fire of this type can spread within the waste mass and burn for months or even years, damaging the facility, neighboring lands and the surrounding environment. Add to that the threat of explosion if the landfill gas collection system were to be engulfed in the conflagration, and a landfill fire becomes a major safety concern.

 

Six equipment operators sacrificed their Sunday night and Monday morning to the task of ensuring that the fire remained under control and burned only piles of relatively innocuous brush. They worked through the night in conjunction with firefighters to cut fire breaks and establish an earthen perimeter around the fire. The fire department deemed the inferno too large and hot to extinguish, and once it was contained directed us to let it burn itself out. These brave landfill employees risked bodily injury (or worse) to keep the landfill from going up in flames, literally.  Their efforts turned what could have been a major environmental and safety disaster into essentially a five-acre campfire. While these half-dozen employees deserve special recognition, it should also be noted that at least as many other employees called in throughout the night offering their assistance in fighting the blaze—a stark demonstration of their dedication to the duty they perform in the name of every resident of the Dallas community.

 

Protecting the Community: An Integral Part of Any Landfill Job

These two events serve as reminders of the many potential hazards mitigated by good landfill operators. They were the only occasions during my decade at McCommas Bluff that I was obliged to follow the reporting directives in 30TAC330.129. The root cause of each of these two major incidents will never be known for sure, as the flames started away from observers. Had we been fortunate enough to have landfill operators immediately present, I have no doubt that they would have extinguished the flare-ups in no time, as they had done, and continue to do, more regularly than most citizens would like to know. Putting out minor fires is, in fact, relatively commonplace at waste management facilities. But we should all be mindful of the heroism that dedicated landfill employees are ready to demonstrate in the face of life-threatening danger.

 

Adam Jochelson, P. E., is a Landfill Engineer and Facility Specialist working for GeoShack, Inc. (Dallas, TX), where he promotes the application of cutting edge technologies to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of landfill operations. Adam built his knowledge and techniques over a nine-year period as the onsite engineer at McCommas Bluff Landfill in Dallas, TX. His unique experiences in engineering and other fields have combined to create an exceptional understanding of the various challenges inherent in landfill planning, design and operations. Adam can be reached at (972) 342-3055 or via e-mail at [email protected].

 

**Dedicated to Loyd Higdon, Tony Johnson, Frankie Goodson, Thomas Gray, Bennie Goodson, Bobby King and the rest of the dedicated crew of landfill equipment operators at McCommas Bluff.

 

Sidebar

Land·fill En·gi·neer [land-fil en-juh-neer]

noun an environmental engineer who specializes in the design, management, planning, and development, of solid waste management facilities; a unique combination of engineer, surveyor, data analyst, computer programmer, construction worker, manager, teacher, writer, conservationist, and experimenter.

 

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