Nantuckets garbage problem has been getting worse over the past 20 years, then to top it off, the MASS DEP deemed their landfill at capacity. The DEP ordered the landfill to be shut down and capped by 1999. The island had nowhere else to put their garbage so everything had to be trucked to the mainland via ferry. in turn the taxes almost doubled by 2003. This past january, we were contracted to start mining the landfill which consists of only 30% trash and 70% sand which was used as daily cover(crazy isn't it).The landfill covers around 50 acres and contains about 3 million c/yds of trash and sand. By the time we are done mining and screening, the landfill will be reduced to only 15 acres and be contained in new lined cells we are constructing to todays standards. Combined with the new Recycling facility and composting plant now up and running, 85-90% of material coming in gets recycled and only 10-15% is landfill bound. In turn we have a 300 year solution for the islands waste and possiby longer as we begin recycling more types of material. ok enough talkin, now to the iron. We brought one of our older PC400's up from Jersey to start with and a new McCloskey 621 trommel, which we have 2 in operation now. We now have 4 966g's, 2 D6R's a 325BL and a 200clc deere. Heres a few photos to start with. i'm gonna take a bunch more in the near future as soon as i get a free moment.
the cutaway shows how much daily cover they used. all the needed was a couple inches not a couple feet of sand
So when you mention mining how does that work? The concept sounds great I wonder if NYC has ever considered such a plan for there mass garbage issue?
I bet the smell of that job is awful.
Well, New York has all of new jersey to dump their trash on. Jersey makes too much money to put a stop to it. but if jersey built a super sized composting facility, they could greatly reduce the landfill bound material, charge new york the same money, plus sell the compost they produce as probably the best topsoil in the state. All they look at is the initial cost of building the digester and the rest of the facility. Our digester is built to handle 200 tons per day and the cost of it and the rest of the facility is millions. Here is a pic of our digester. It is 12 feet in diameter and 180 feet long. The waste that goes in the top end, comes out 3 to 4 days later as compost. The smell of the landfill mining is not bad at all, as there has never been any industrial waste or business on the island and there never will be either. The fact that there are no polluting chemicals in the landfill also makes our job easy and safer too.
Wow, those figures are what the enviromentalists have organisms over. Incredible to believe they had so much sand to waste expect they assumed the more they dug up to use as cover the bigger the hole to put the garbage in. Thats going to keep you out of mischief for quite a while. :drinkup
Interresting post. Thanks tdozer!:drinkup This is a type of work that we will see a lot more to in the future. A lot of the landfills can be handled the same way. With parts of the old filling resycled, all the iron f instance. The fill can be redused to nearly nothing.
Well dirty jerz, now dumps on PA, and now Kentucky. The Company i work for, ESI has 2 brand new landfills, in KY, VA. We also own the largest transfer station in North Jersey(SWTR) in Newark. We are building another one in Kearney on Doremus Ave. We are the only bale and rail supplied land fills in the country. we also are looking into building a transfer stations in Boston Ma, and New Haven Ct. here is our website www.esiwaste.com
AtlasRob, Those numbers are exactly what the environmentalists love, everybody should love them. Florida DEP has flown to nantucket three times now to use our facility as a model and they want us to design and build 10 new composting facilitys across their state. virginia and delaware are also interested. so we are definately gonna have our hands full as recycling is the way of the future. we need about 1.5 million yard of the sand that comes out of the landfill as fill onsite to fill the pits they dug over the years. Tonka, Most of our material going in our lined cells also gets baled. That further saves room in the cell. Those bales are more compact than you will ever get it with the typical landfill compactor, which we also have an old Cat 826C that just gets used to reduce wood waste before it goes through the tub grinder. Speaking of boston, just outside the city, in walpole Mass. we are opening another new landfill/composting facility to accept all bostons food waste. someday we might run into eachother. Our website is old but here it is, WWW.wasteoptions.com . Sorry but i dont know how to post a link. someday ill get better with this computer gizmo.
Nice, our bales run from 2.5 tons to 3.25 tons a piece we have the 6 (2 in use in NJ,4 on order) of the largest garbage balers in the world. Do you guys break open your bails after they get to the cell? We also send everything threw the grinder, wood, household, furniture, everything! tdozer , what part of jersey are you in?
Our bales are smaller i guess. They are between 1 and 2 tons. We also try to keep them as bales in the lined cell but sometimes one or two get busted when laying them out. I live in chatsworth, in the middle of the pine barrens. Do you grind tires too.
I'm in Voorhees, well tires slip though now and again buy not alot. Wow we bust open our bales for better dcomp...
the material that our bales are made of, all goes through our digester first. So anything that is decomposable is already gone and turned into compost.so there is no decompable material in them. they are about 98% plastic bags which nobody wants for recycling. if you know of anyone who will buy clean plastic bag bales, please let me know. Bags are our biggest headache, we would love to be able to get rid of them for a profit if possible. I did a big job in vorhees a few years back, a big housing development right on centennial rd. That job was wild, 15 Volvo A30c's & d's 3 450 hitachi's,4 627's, countless other iron. Our office trailer was more of a bar than an office. Yeah i spent a few nights in there. Hey it was better than tryin to drive all the way home. I wish i had a digital cam back then, some good memories.
ah the old folks retirement community:drinkup haha
Thats a very very interesting project tdozer, thanks for the pics and looking foward to more pics and updates! Is there a time frame for the work?
Plastic bags :Banghead. If a man can find a cost effective way of recyling them into something other than MORE plastic bags he will certainly be on to a winner. It has got so bad in the UK now, supermarkets are trying to find ways to reduce our dependence on them after years of giving them to us as a convienience. tdozer I had a look your operation via the link you posted :woohoo that is one serious operation and only to be commended. I can easily see why it gets visits as a show case, keep up the good work :thumbsup
Well, as for a time frame, We have another 16 years on our lease of the property. At the rate we are going now, it will take up to 9 years to complete the mining. We are ordering 1 or 2 more McCloskey 621 trommels to speed things up. in the winter the mining comes to a halt, our screens will freeze shut in a matter of minutes so spring summer and fall we have to start hitting it hard. Thanks to everyone for the great replys and feel free to ask questions. Jim.
Want me to drop the orders off? McCloskey's plant is about 5 miles at most down the road from me. One of these days I should stop by with the camera.
need more help:yup
Awesome thread! You know all the I-95 corridor states from Va to NY are in need of these. Pa and Va were the two largest takers of garbage from NY. I know in my area we get garbage from one county and then we haul it through that same county who delievered it to us to King George Va. landfill and I see it as a total racket! Had we had a compost pile we'd keep the profits 100 percent and it would be a good thing.
Our super markets now sell them to you if you want/need one. I seriously didn't know you could mine/recycle a dump. That must be quite hair raising. Have fun
There is a certain line of thought that says in the future when raw materials get more scarce we will all be mining the old landfills for the recycleable materials. Looks like you guys are a step ahead.
Generally, shouldn't you recycle before you send your trash to the landfill??
Interesting operation...what excavators do you have working there? Tonka, where in New Haven does your company want to put a transfer station and how is that plan holding up?
We are still workin out the details of that as we speak. We need to find a place that we can get railcars to, as our trash goes out by rail.
Bellboy, This landfill was started in the mid 50's, before recycling was popular. Also this is on an island, so it would have costed the town too much money to ferry or barge it to the mainland. Now that recycling is in high demand, it pays fairly well. Stretch, Right now we have a PC400LC, a 200lc deere and a 325BL. We are bringing another PC400 up from jersey as soon as the tourists are done for the season. The ferrys are so backed up right now, it would cost us double right now for the ferry. Also we are in the design phase for a huge composting facility outside of boston in Walpole. In about 6 months we should be starting that.
How do you get it onto the ferries? Is it acceptable just keeping it on the lowboy? Thanks Tonka, hope you can keep us posted as things fall into place.
Yup, she stays right on the Beam trailer. A 400 is about the biggest you can put on the boat in one piece.
I know it sure drove up the price of landfills around here (or at least it was one factor). I remember when I could dump a tandem load at the local landfill for $15, $9 for a single axle. Isn't there any concern about heavy metals contaminating the compost? I have to imagine it's hard to get it all out.
Are you as yet worried about cleaning up the dump?:stirthepot What about methane?:guns
Here are a few pics of Me rebuilding our BioFilter. It is basically an upside down septic leach field for air instead of liquid. The air from the composting plant gets drawn through a pair of air scrubbers which take any particulates out and then it gets blown out through the BioFilter which takes any smell away. All it consists of is Pipe, stone and green wood grindings. right now i am grinding a large stump pile for the chips with our Morbark tub grinder. I will post some pics of that opperation if i can remember to bring my camera to work. Then i will place them over the new stone and pipe. this is all being done because of careless operators. the wood chips have to be replaced every 6 months or when they decay too much. in the past the operator used a solid tire 966G right on top of the pipe. when i started to strip the chips, using the 200 deere(the right way) i found 53 out of 64 pipes crushed. Hey this is why we had to come all the way from jersey. the place was falling apart. well heres the pics.
a few more pics I took these pics while pushing to the PC400, with our D6H. This D6 is completely beat but runs great. 17000 hard hours and still goin strong. It is hard to see in the pics but i am about 30' above the 400. I have to get the pics that my co workers took from the bottom to get the good view of the height of the landfill.
Sorry to bring up a thread from the dead, but is there any chance you (tdozer) or someone else has a High Resolution version of this image? I think it's fascinating and need it for a school project I'm working on. I registered for the forum hoping to send a PM to tdozer, but I'm not allowed to at this time, so this is the best I can go with. Thanks in advance, GiveUp
what happen you just quit posting
It's about 6 years later, so what's news on this project? Are you guys still running it or did something else happen?
I couldn't find the article, but I read recently someone has created a process of turning not only bags but plastics in general into diesel.