It's not a football stadium; it's a landfill

    April Anderson wasn't kidding.

    The engineer from Foth and Van Dyke Inc., when explaining a few months ago how the Carroll County Landfill would be expanded, said workers would basically be digging a giant hole, adding with a laugh "but it'll be a good-looking hole."

    Walk to the edge of the nearly completed expansion area and you get the feel of being in the top row of  a college football stadium.  Two hundred thousand cubic yards of earth were scraped out by Rasch Construction of Fort Dodge, which won the contract for the $528,573 project, turning what three months ago was a hill into a giant brown bowl.

    This week workers began the final phase on a five-acre dumping area that's expected to last about five years.  Texas Environmental Plastics laid and fused wide sheets of black high-density polyethylene on the slopes and floor of the expansion area then melted the 23-foot0wide strips together to form a leakproof barrier.

    The 60-mil liner was placed atop two feet of compacted clay.

    Now that the plastic liner is in place, said Solid Waste Commission director Mary Wittry, workers will next place layers of fabric and net before dumping 18 inches of shredded tires.

    "Then we'll put the trash on top of that, " she said.

    Newly built landfill areas are required by law to have liner systems to collect leachate, the liquid that seeps to the bottom.  A recessed pipe runs the length of the expansion area.  It will collect leachate and direct it to the old landfill's collection system which feeds into Carroll's sanitary sewer system and is treated at the city's wastewater plant.

    "It's all in the name of protecting our groundwater," Wittry said of the project.

    Commission staff were admiring the speed and quality with which the 10-man Texas Environmental Plastics crew was working.

    "It's very labor-intensive what we're doing," Wittry said.  "They walked the entire site and removed dirt clods and other sharp edges that could cut he liner.  They have to stretch out the plastic by hand.  They move hundreds of sandbags by hand to hold the plastic down.  Then they weld it all together by hand.  And they even test every seam to make sure it doesn't leak.  It's impressive how hard they work.

    The TEP team came from a project in North Carolina and next heads to Salt Lake City, Utah to install another liner.

    The commission has been preparing for the day that the landfill, now 31 years old, runs out of space.  The expansion, which will cost about $1 million total, is already paid for and won't cost Carroll County taxpayers a cent.

    The commission purchased land north and east of the landfill in the 1990's for expansion use.

    And when if began accepting trash and recyclables from other counties in 1994, the commission decided to set those revenues aside to pay for landfill expansion, the costs to close the present landfill and the many future financial assurances required by the state.  the commission now has approximately $2.7 million invested in eight Carroll County banks for those and other financial commitments.

    Wittry said the first expansion phase will be completed before it Oct. 1 deadline.

    The area will have eight to 10 cells for dumping of residential trash.  The commission will use remaining space in the current landfill for dumping of construction and demolition waste.

    "It's going to be a different operation for us in this new area," Wittry said.  "At no time can our landfill equipment drive on a fill area that's not covered in garbage, otherwise it would tear the liner."

    Trash will be dumped in the new area immediately.  A four-foot layer of garbage will be placed atop the whole liner to give it frost protection, then dumping will commence at one corner.

    Future expansions will provide more trash space than the first, since they won't need the large slope abutting the first expansion.  the commission will build future cells in a horseshoe pattern on the west and south sides of the landfill, and when the final expansion cell is built in 25 to 30 years, its liner will be connected to the liner laid the week.

    Guthrie, Shelby and Calhoun counties bring their trash to the Carroll county Landfill via contracts with the Solid Waste Commission.  About 125 tons is dumped there every day.

    The commission's recycling program serves 57 cities in Carroll, Audubon, Crawford, Shelby, Guntrie and Calhoun counties.  The recycling Center now sorts and processes 30 tons a day.