ZoWie wrote: ↑Sun Nov 17, 2024 8:34 am
Good question. They have those transfer stations where they load up the barges with the stuff. Then, off down the river it goes. Wonder where it rounds up.
I lived in Trumbull, Connecticut in the early 60s, about 50 miles from New York City, and I remember seeing on TV New York would load barges up with garbage and the would dump it well off shore in the ocean where it was very deep. Don't know if they still do that or not.
I was listening to NPR a few years back and they had an interesting story on the solid waste residue from the city's water treatment plants. The city sold it en-bulk and it was hauled away in railway cars and used for fertilizer on farms in the Mid-West. Apparently, that fertilizer was better than the fertilizer made by the chemical companies and it produce more crops per acre.
In LA, they take it all into the hills. They fill up entire canyons, cover them over when they're full, and deal with the resulting underground fires. They glow in the dark from where the burning gas is vented off. I assume it all goes into the atmosphere and accelerates climate change.
It's the methane that's burning off. Methane is what we commonly call natural gas. Back in the late 90, I was stationed at McClellan AFB just outside of Sacramento. One of my duties was to ensure the company that was destroying out expired and excess drugs was doing so in the proper manner. Myself and a couple of NCOs toured a landfill company outside of Stockton the company used to destroy the drugs. The landfill company had a contract with Stockton to handle their garbage disposal. They're process went like this; truck would enter a large building and back up to a deep pit and dump the garbage collected. A huge claw, like you see in arcade machines, would come down and pick up a large amount of garbage. The claw would lift it and deposit it into a chute and conveyor belt that led to a furnace. The furnace was heated to 1800F degrees and would burn everything. The ash and metals that did not burn were conveyed to another area where an electromagnet would pick out iron metals and shift the ashes from metals. The metals would be sold for recycling and the ashes were put in the landfill. The ashes, if I recall correctly, composed about 3% of the material that wasn't incinerated. What was interesting about the operation is all the exhaust air went through a water filter and other filters before being released into the air. They provided us documentation from the EPA showing the air leaving their exhaust towers was cleaning than the air coming into the plant. Another feature of the plant is once they fired up the furnace and reached the right temperature, they'd shut of the gas and the furnace would maintain that temperature as long as they fed the furnace. The heat from the furnace not only burned the garbage but it was used to heat water for a generator to produce electricity which the plant sold back to Stockton.
The plant was really ingenious in what they were doing. Driving past the landfill you wouldn't know it was a landfill because you couldn't see or smell the garbage. Stockton paid them twice, once for the garbage they burned and once for the electricity they produced. It would be beneficial if more large cities, like L.A., San Diego, New York, etc., would do that. It's save a lot of land, reduce pollution, and provide a source of electricity.
When you vote left, you vote right.
