HOT SPRINGS -- Swollen with construction and demolition debris, the ground at the Cedar Glades Landfill rises unabated toward the 250-foot limit permitted by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality.
"This thing is getting bigger and bigger every day," said Billy Sawyer, Garland County's deputy director of environmental services. "Every day it gets bigger, it's going to take more people and more money. Right now we're running this place on a skeleton crew."
Most of the department's 34 employees and more than $9 million budget are directed toward weighing, sorting, compacting, covering and hauling the waste that flows in.
The cleat-tracked bulldozer that traversed over landfill materials Friday and reduced it to a fourth of its volume plied an uncovered section of the 85-foot rise, but there's little otherwise to betray what lies beneath. A mix of dirt, shale and hay is layered over the debris weekly, giving most of the site the appearance of a nondescript dirt mound.
The landfill's phase-one area, which covers 12 acres and rises to 100 feet in some areas, accounts for 15 years of construction and demolition materials.
Approval of financial assurance documentation submitted last week to the Department of Environmental Quality is the final regulatory barrier to clear before the landfill's second 12-acre phase becomes operational. It assures funds are available to clean up and secure the site in the event of it being shut down or abandoned.
The site can expand into 37 acres adjacent to the first two phases, providing space for another 100 years.
A $700,000 excavation has cleared the ground for the phase-two area, extracting clay and dirt that can be repurposed into a covering liner that prevents water from getting into the debris and causing harmful runoff. Three 6-inch layers of clay lining the bottom of phase two are designed to keep landfill materials from permeating the ground.
"The layers have to meet certain specs," said Paul Thompson, the Garland County director of environmental services. "This is really good clay from the Malvern area."
A clay liner is required for Cedar Glades' Class IV rating, which allows it to collect construction and demolition debris. Thompson said its predecessor, the nearby Wildcat Landfill, was a Class I landfill permitted for household garbage until a Clean Water Act provision that mandated plastic liners took effect in 1990.
It operated as a Class IV facility until Cedar Glades opened in 2000.
Situated west of a ridge that separates it from Hot Springs' Lakeside Water Treatment Plant, the site covers a 61-acre tract but occupies little of the public's consciousness, officials said.
"There's a lot to operating a landfill and all the services," Thompson said. "People don't realize it. It's usually just out of sight, out of mind for trash. They don't think about what's involved, and there's lots of regulations."
Before waste reaches the landfill, it goes to a transfer station, the county's waste clearinghouse, where it is collected, sorted and sent to its final destinations. Class I material goes to the Waste Management-run Two Pines Landfill in North Little Rock or the Jefferson County Landfill.
Transfer station workers also ferret out and sort recyclables, compacting and bundling aluminum cans into 670-pound bales and separating high-density polyethylene milk jugs from smaller polyethylene terephthalate plastic containers. Rate of return determines where the recyclables go.
"They go to several places," Sawyer said. "We try to make sure we're getting the most money for them, so they just don't go to one person."
The Southwest Central Regional Solid Waste Management District collects cardboard, newspapers and electronic waste. Thompson said the transfer station has received an influx of old computers and electronic devices since Hot Springs Village closed its recycling center.
Recycling returns aren't immediately apparent, but they pay significant dividends in the long run.
"These guys really work hard to make sure the county is getting money out of these loads," Sawyer said of the transfer station workers. "You don't make money off recycling, but you save 30 percent of your landfill space, and space in a landfill is very expensive."
Metro on 05/25/2015