It’s a bright, sunny day at the Scott Area Landfill where a large machine is unrolling wide sheets of heavy plastic onto the smooth, sloped side of what looks like a huge bowl in the earth. The sheets are 23½-feet wide and made of 60-mil HDPE plastic, the kind used for detergent bottles only much thicker. Their installation is the latest step in the ongoing construction of a new, 8.8-acre “cell,” or area in which to dump trash. When finished, the cell will be able to hold 827,000 cubic yards of garbage.
The project began years ago with planning, but active construction commenced in 2017 with the excavation of the big bowl in the ground, going to a depth of 50 feet below the level around it, Brian Seals, operations manager, explained. The $3.2 million project is expected to be finished and put to use yet this year.
Once the liner is in place and welded together, a geo-composite netting will be installed over the liner. Next will come a one-foot layer of a protective refuse material called “fluff,” produced from what’s left of automobiles after the metal, glass, tires and fluids have been removed.
The cell, named Cell No. 8, then will be ready to open, accepting regular garbage. Employees will be careful to place only household waste in the area at first rather than, say, construction materials that could include heavy, pointed pieces of lumber that could possibly poke through to the liner, Seals said.