Photographs by yours truly. (The blonde woman is my professor!)
So on May 9th we had our second fieldtrip for my Environmental Science Class. I was looking
forward to visiting the landfill because waste and its disposal is something that I am becoming more concerned about.
First of all, let me just say that MapQuest cannot be trusted 100%. My professor gave us directions on her website for students, but like a FOOL, I used MapQuest. It sent me in the complete opposite direction before I started to get a feeling that I was heading the wrong way so I stopped at a liquor store to get directions and sure enough my gut feeling was right. I hightailed it back the right way and I started seeing landfill signs and knew I was on the right track. I saw cars parked on a dirt strip next to the road and I assumed I was in the right place because the professor had mentioned something about parking a little off from the location. I looked at the cars next to me if they had the RCC parking sticker but they did not.(I do not recommend wearing old converse if anyone should choose to go there after reading this. You will certainly slip as I did when I walked down dirt strip and around the Landfill). I proceeded warily up the road and it looked like a construction site at first. I went up to the post where they let cars into the main parking lot and knocked on the window but no one was there. I was going to head back to my car when I saw a small group in bright orange vests in the short distance. I jogged up and out of breath and sweaty and hoped I had made enough of a graceful inconspicuous entrance so that I did not distract the tour guide and group. That is the background story to how I found my Fieldtrip group and why I was late.
Any who, I got handed one of the orange vests, and tried to get caught up on the tour. One thing I want to point out is, that it did not smell! I thought their was going to be that unbearable stench of garbage but there wasn't; they got things under control there! Maybe the tour group had the opportunity of visiting the stinky area-if they did I missed it. They are very diligent about not taking hazardous materials and monitoring everything that is discharged from the landfill site. The trash is covered by tarps so rodents do not get in. Would it be that bad if rodents did get in and eat the trash though? Wouldn't that make for less trash? (I did not ask these questions as they are just coming to my mind as I write this.) That specific landfill has 10 years left. What I thought was smart was that there is a "litter fence" I'm guessing around the perimeter of the landfill, so that on windy days it can trap the loose trash. They have a recycling area! I was really glad to see that there. It is generally for electrical appliances like fridges and TV and whatnot. They break the appliances apart and ship designated parts to their specific recycling locations. Before this program (which I asked how long had been running-apparently for a good deal of time) appliances used to get thrown in the dump as well. 72% of the waste has to be diverted from the landfill by 2020 the tour guide said into recycling etc. She (tour guide) told us about the liner system and many layers underneath the actual waste. The Landfill site is a as big as 7 Disneylands! If we changed out disposal method to incineration it would be 150$ per household! We were told about a new waste management technique called gasification but it's exceedingly more expensive than incineration. Also I thought it was interesting that Los Angeles has to ship their trash to Orange County, I'm guessing because their sites are filled already and because their is so many people there. The second thing I was surprised about as you can see in the photos is that the site is like a v-shaped canyon, here I thought we were going to see mountains of trash! They are running a tip-top shape landfill site if you ask me and makes me feel a little bit better about landfills and how they work.
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