Alaska Waste driver Will Bunch nodded at the mud as he navigated a heavy truck through milling crowds of seagulls.
“Back in January, we were filling up this half,” he said. “Now it’s way over here.”
Trucks from across the peninsula bring in dozens of tons of trash at a time and deposit it in the pit called a cell, to be eventually buried. It doesn’t take decades to fill one.
Each day, he drives prescribed routes to homes and businesses, looping from homes deep in the Nikiski woods to oil and gas businesses where he has to punch in passcodes to enter the gate. Ticking off each stop as he goes, he knows businesses by their trash habits. In July, he would pull expertly up to a garbage bin in Old Town Kenai, emptying its contents into the back of the truck by mechanical arms in less than a minute as dipnetters messily cleaned fish on a table nearby. He nodded as he emptied one garbage bin not marked for fish garbage.
“Yeah, there’s some fish in there,” he said. “It gets really bad with these bins that you empty once a week, because the fish start decaying.”
At the landfill, he wheeled the truck around and backed it next to a mound of trash, where another driver was dropping off his own load. Bunch jumped out and unlatched the hook holding the back hatch in place, stepped back to the cab of the truck and triggered a lever that pushed the loaf of trash out to join the rest. About five tons of trash of all colors and states of decay came tumbling out: cardboard boxes, kitchen bags, solitary soda bottles and a five-gallon bucket. Without ceremony, Bunch secured the hatch again and prepared to head out to gather more.
About 98 percent of the Kenai Peninsula’s approximately 57,763 residents send their trash to the landfill just outside Soldotna. The average person in the U.S. produced about 4.4 pounds of waste per day in 2014, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
By the numbers, the Central Peninsula Landfill accepted an estimated 66,877 tons of garbage in 2015, or approximately 133.7 million pounds of garbage. Trash production swings from a high in July to a low in the winter months. About 400 tons of trash arrive each day at the Central Peninsula Landfill in July, compared to 75 to 80 tons in the winter, according to borough records.
Kenai Peninsula Borough voters will be asked to approve $10.6 million in bonds on the ballot this October to plan and build new space for waste disposal. As time goes on and the population of the borough grows, the landfill will have to accommodate more trash unless people recycle more or generate less to begin with.
What Becomes of Garbage
Solid waste management goes beyond just drag-and-drop. After drivers like Bunch trundle back out to make their rounds, workers at the Central Peninsula Landfill set in on what is left behind.
Trash comes in a variety of types. The most common is municipal solid waste — kitchen waste, tires and blue jeans all fit into that category. Construction and demolition waste goes into its own area in the landfill. Land-clearing and wood debris have a designated space next to construction and demolition material. Asbestos goes into its own space, as do junk vehicles and scrap metals, according to the borough Solid Waste Department’s 2015 report.
Central Peninsula Landfill uses a system of lined cells to bury waste. The plastic liners prevent liquids from the buried garbage from leaching into the ground. At the end of each day, the waste is leveled and covered with either a soil mixture or a temporary daily cover.
Soldotna used to run what is now the Central Peninsula Landfill. The borough picked up operations there in 1974; in 1990, the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly designated it as the areawide landfill. Previously operating landfills in Kenai, Seward and Homer were then closed. All waste on the road systems is now routed to Soldotna.
The borough built its first lined cell to handle waste in 2005, closing the old unlined cell permanently in 2007. Since then, the first cell has been filled and closed and all the municipal solid waste goes into Cell 2. The borough is in the process of excavating Cell 3 now and will ask the public this fall to approve a bond issuance of more than $10 million to fund its construction as well as the future construction of a fourth cell.
To read the full story, visit http://peninsulaclarion.com/news/2016-09-03/waste-not-want-not.