Badlands Landfill

On Friday, May 17th my Environmental Science class had  its last and final field trip to the Badlands Landfill in Moreno Valley, California. Now, it took just 20 minutes to get there, not only that but it's right by my grandpas house where I go once a year for Christmas eve... and I never knew this landfill was there.

I carpooled to the Landfill with Denis, a classmate of mine (carpool whenever you can!). The first thing I noticed were the plastic bags stuck in the trees in front of the parking lot. To our surprise it didn't smell horrible as we had anticipated, in fact it really didn't smell very much at all.

The fence is used to catch trash.

Our tour began with a few quick facts from Sara, our guide;

• This landfill use to be a burn site (all garbage was piled up then lit on fire), now instead the garbage is compacted and buried with dirt.
• Methane gas is produced from the breaking down of garbage
• Gas to Energy; The landfill collects the methane and converts it to energy... They run the AC all summer long without paying a penny!
• Leachate is water that picks up trash and other things and becomes contaminated
• Leachate can't be released into our water supply so the landfill sprays it back onto the dirt to help eliminate dust
• All gas is pulled from the landfill to eliminate water contamination
• At the end of the day the compacted garbage has to be covered:
• At first 6 inches of dirt was piled onto the compacted garbage, then they started putting green-waste (your yard waste), then finally they decided to use tarps

• Using tarps saves 6 months to a year of land space

Then our tour really began and our first stop was where the electronics and appliances are put. Here two people work every day, literally just unscrewing and taking apart the electronics so that the good parts can be sold and reused.

Then from here we hiked down to where the sedimentation basin. This is where basically all of the rain water runoff goes, and also where the water is collected and tested to make sure its not contaminated.

COOL FACT: Hydrologists have the ability to estimate how much water our worst storm would throw at us, and these sedimentation basins were designed to be able to handle the worse case scenario!

Here are some other facts we learned on the way to our final stop, where the trash is dumped and buried...

Sedimentation Basin

• All over the world except the US, their main way to rid of trash is by burning it
• Stakes placed in the ground tell just how high the pile of trash is aloud to go
• Old asphalt is recycled and used at the landfill to make their roads
• No oxygen is aloud in the landfills so things don't decompose... Crazy!!!
• There are disturbance limits on site, and endangered species of plants have to be move
• Lots of fossils are found here at the Badlands Landfill
• Pre-1993 landfills have no liners
• The landfill is not run off of taxes but is run off of revenue, its like a business
• Coyote footprints are left behind when they are looking for food.

Seeing the big trucks lined up to dump off trash was a sad site to see. On top of 200 feet of garbage is where we stood to view this all happening... It's something everyone should see at some point to understand how much garbage we just take to landfills to bury and cover as if it was never there.