FAQs • Ponca City • CivicEngage

Why do landfills exist?: Landfills today are far from what they were even thirty years ago. Like much in the world, they have improved as more has been learned about how to make them better. The old landfill method was to find someone who had a hole or gully on their property that they wanted filled. Then fill it with trash, cover it with dirt and seed it to grass. This type of landfill was often referred to as a dump. It was not unusual for the day’s trash to be burned at night in an effort to get as much trash as possible into the dump. These were very inefficient, unsanitary and unsafe when compared to the modern landfill. Modern sub-title D landfills are marvels of engineering. They are structures that fully contain the garbage that is placed into them. So, how are the items put in the landfill fully contained? Well, it all starts from the ground up.

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Landfill

When you decide to replace something large and "reusable," be sure to donate the old one to a local charitable organization. Most of the time the item can be repaired by those groups and then redistributed into other homes rather than landfills.

When you need to purchase something, check out yard sales and charitable outlets first to see if they have what you need before selecting something new.

2. What are the Landfill’s hours of operation?: The Landfill is open Monday through Saturday, 8:00 am to 5:00 pm. It is located west of Ponca City, three miles south of the Waverly and South Avenue intersection, at 2501 West Riverview Road.

3. What is the life expectancy of Ponca City’s landfill?: Life expectancy of the entire 80-acre site is estimated at 80 years using current volume figures.

4. What is a Landfill?: People often ask, “What exactly is a landfill’? Most think it is a hole in the ground that gets filled with garbage, then covered up with dirt and forgotten. Then there are a few people that think a landfill is an environmental disaster waiting to happen. In reality, landfills are a necessary part of life. Everyone produces trash. That trash has to be managed in a manner that will provide a clean and healthy environment to live in. Nobody likes landfills, but what would people do with their trash if they didn’t exist?

5. Why do landfills exist?: Landfills today are far from what they were even thirty years ago. Like much in the world, they have improved as more has been learned about how to make them better. The old landfill method was to find someone who had a hole or gully on their property that they wanted filled. Then fill it with trash, cover it with dirt and seed it to grass. This type of landfill was often referred to as a dump. It was not unusual for the day’s trash to be burned at night in an effort to get as much trash as possible into the dump. These were very inefficient, unsanitary and unsafe when compared to the modern landfill. Modern sub-title D landfills are marvels of engineering. They are structures that fully contain the garbage that is placed into them. So, how are the items put in the landfill fully contained? Well, it all starts from the ground up.

6. How is a landfill constructed?: A landfill is all about containing the garbage. The structure of the landfill cell is designed in such a manner that it will contain all the garbage and any liquids generated by the decomposing garbage. The construction of a landfill cell begins with the placement and compaction of a clay underliner. This underliner is 24 inches thick and heavily compacted so that it forms a moisture barrier. A 60 mil polyurethane liner is placed over this compacted clay and heat seamed into a single piece. The seams are leak checked to make sure there are no leaks in the liner. The leachate collection system is installed on the liner. The leachate collection system is a set of perforated pipes that are laid out with the grade and will allow any liquids generated in the landfill to flow to a central collection point and then to the leachate lagoon. Once the leachate collection system is in place, 24 inches of select sand is placed over the entire liner. This layer of sand serves two purposes. One: it aids in the movement of fluids to the collection lines, and two: it serves as a protective layer for the liner so that it is not damaged during the compaction of the garbage. This completes the liner assembly.

7. How is a cell filled?: Filling the cell seems a simple task at first glance. Just get the garbage to the landfill, dump it into the cell and cover it up. Well again, things aren’t always as simple as they seem. The Solid Waste Industry has regulations that must be followed for the disposal of garbage. The State periodically inspects the landfill to make sure their requirements are met. There are certain items that can’t be disposed of in the landfill. A few of them are lead acid batteries, anything with Freon or other refrigerants in them, and anything hazardous such as biohazard bags, stuff containing PCB’s and such. These items have to be disposed of at a hazardous waste facility rather than a regular landfill. That is why those entering the landfill must stop at the scale house not only to be weighed, but so the attendant can check the garbage in the vehicle for items that the landfill cannot accept and to give directions on where to unload the garbage at the working face.

8. What’s a working face?: At the working face, the customer unloads the garbage in front of a large sloping area of packed garbage and then heads back to the scale house to weigh out and pay. So what happens to the garbage that is left at the working face? It gets moved into the working face by a bulldozer. What the bulldozer does is push the garbage from the unloading area up onto the actual working face. This working face is an area of the lift that is being filled that day. This area has a long slope of exposed trash that is being compressed by a machine called a compactor. The compactor is designed to place and tightly compact the garbage into a lift. (A lift is an 8 to 10 foot thick layer of compacted garbage sandwiched between two layers of dirt.)The compactor is a heavy machine with studded steel wheels rather than tires or tracks. This lets the machine compact the garbage into a very tight mass, so that the maximum amount of garbage can be placed in a minimum amount of space. The bulldozer is used at the end of the day to place cover dirt over the working face (compacted garbage) to prevent animals and birds from getting into the trash.