Over the past years, our Kewaunee County Landfill has
struggled with the daily cover at our landfill.
The DNR requires that each day any waste is added to the landfill that,
after the end of the day, that waste must be covered with an approved material
in order to reduce odors and keep the waste in place.
Daily cover is a complex issue. Depending on the density of the cover type, the
number of cubic feet of space consumed on a daily basis can be
significant. Too much cover negatively
impacts the overall economic well-being of the landfill. The goal is to keep the daily cover to 20% or
less, thus consuming less air space that would be available for more
waste. So with that in mind, our
landfill staff and landfill committee set about to find a more economical way
of handling daily cover that would be approved by the DNR.
Kewaunee County received approval from the DNR to employ a
new Enviro Cover that in effect is sort of like covering the landfill open
space daily with a 1.25 mil of degradable plastic covering (sort of like the
green garbage bags you use at home).
Although this type of landfill cover is used extensively in some other
states, Kewaunee County Landfill is the first landfill in the state of
Wisconsin to use this cover type.
In the picture provided, Steve Wegner is applying the cover
to the landfill utilizing the Enviro Cover System that is attached to the front
of a Cat loader. The Enviro system lays
down a 16 foot wide cover while at the same time applying a material (dirt,
sand, shredder fluff, etc.) to hold it in place on the landfill. Steve caught on very quick and even with a
good stiff wind blowing, had no difficulty in applying the strips of degradable
film over the waste. The seagulls? Well, they were wondering what happened to their
food source.
It appears this system will work well for our landfill as it
will reduce the amount of space consumed by daily cover. Also, from the standpoint of efficiency, one
man can do the job by himself. It is
estimated that it will take 30-40 minutes each day to seal off the
landfill. There are different grades of
the degradable films that would allow us to seal an area off for up to five
weeks before having to apply more fill in that area.
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