Artist’s Journal:

One of the greatest threats to our landfill management, in my opinion, is the aging leadership.

I promised myself I would share this story, because it exemplified everything that can be done right, when the person in charge understands the assignment.

Scott told me about how they managed to start the yard waste program for the city. Essentially, Scott knew that the landfill would need a certain amount of acreage to manage the amount of yard waste that would be coming in for composting. And he also knew that that space would need clean fill as a ground-level base from which to work; but fill is expensive, and if he’d had to buy clean fill, it would have made the project unfeasible.

So Scott had another idea. He spoke with the company that was tearing down the old overpasses on the highway. They needed a place to dump the rubble, but that amount of dumping would be super expensive for the company. Scott had a proposition: dump the overpass rubble here, and if you agree to sort out all the rebar from the rubble, we’ll take it off your hands at no charge.

A deal was struck. The construction company unloaded the concrete rubble and had men remove all the iron rebar, and break up the rubble into manageable chunks. Then Scott’s team used that filler to create a space for the yard waste program.

That space is now fully functional. Dozers run up and down daily, mixing the yard waste to create the right biological conditions for composting. The program is a success and it almost wasn’t possible, save for this clever idea for finding clean fill.

These are the untold stories of the department. Heroics we are all unaware of, yet benefit from.

Scott is close to retirement now. His counterpart in the mechanic’s garage retired last year, leaving only much younger staff to take up the reigns. There is legacy knowledge that leaves with the old guard. Knowing how to fix a dozer when parts aren’t available…knowing who to call for more clean fill when it’s needed…knowing how to manage the off-gassing mattresses properly…these are things that took years of on-the-job trial-and-error to learn. These losses will be felt across the city, though we won’t really know how or why.