10.PRSR 04-14-2004 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Grooming garbage (continwed) expanding the landfill, a neces- sary step toward the larger plan. ItJ the short term, officials want to expand the landfill from 31 acres to 119 acres, boosting the total capacity by two-thirds. The L-shaped mega-landfill would contain 26 million cubic yards of waste -enough to fill the Metrodome more than 50 times. But in the longer term, they are seeking to turn a pile of garbage into both golf and gigawatts. The first holes may be completed in three to five years, and the others in coming years. The notion sounds crazy until you get a tour from land- fill manager Mike Niewind. °'^+a ' v~ He sttvg- ~~~ ~, ~` Bled to keep his " ~' SUV on a ~Y l.~', muddy trail up the steep slopes Mike ~ of the 100-foot Niewind plateau. "That's a methane pipe right there," be said, pointing to one- of several S-foot pipes sticking up from the dirt. He explained that bacteria exhale methane, just as humans exhale carbon dioxide. The rotting of household waste - from chicken bones to tea bags - produces methane, especially when kept moist. Usually, the methane bubbles out, as in a swamp. But landfill engineers have learned to pile garbage atop acres of plastic sheeting then put another layer of plastic on top. They seal the edges -just as cooks crimp the edges of a pie. A system of pipes then sucks the gas out and into a small generation plant at the base of the plateau. The garbage generates 4 kilowatts of power, enough for up to 3,000 houses. "It's pretty slick," said Niewind. The methane production goes on for decades but usually peaks at about 15 years. One reason why the idea of golf on garbage isn't such a leap of logic is that the place is dokmright tidy - for a landfill. 'You notice anything miss- ing here?" shouted NiewirJd, over the beep-beep of backing trucks and the roar of a 60-ton compactor. "The smell - we are on 100 feet of garbage, and there is no smell." Below him, on the steep slopes of the plateau, two men hand-picked blowing papers so they wouldn't end up in a yard elsewhere. Operators are proud of how far they've come since the 1950s, when anyone could dump anything on the site. "A lot of people still use that four-letter word -dump," said Deb McDonald, engineer with Waste Management, which operates the landfill. It wasn't methane that attracted Gil] Miller Inc., a golf course architecture firm in River Falls, Wis., to the project. It's the views. "It's pretty dramatic up there," said Paul Miller, one of the partners. At the top of the garbage plateau, high above the trees, you get a 360-degree view of the vast Minnesota River basin. The dirt-covered top looks like a park, with deer, clouds of darting swallows, and natural grasses. But there are, as Miller's partner Garrett Gill calls them, "challenges." Garbage collapses over time. No structures may be built on a landfill, except for smaller build- ings such as concession stands on floating slabs of concrete. A clubhouse would be built at the base of the plateau. Holes 15 through 13 would be beside it, on the banks of the river. Garrett said that irrigation pipes must be flexible polyeth- ylene tubing, not rigid PCV pipe. Golf-cart paths couldn't be made of concrete. Then, there are problems with the terrain. No one wants to golf on a perfectly flat course, even one with fabulous views. But if bull- dozers piled, say, a 15-foot ridge A map shows what the golf course might look like if the landfill expansion and Constru Rion plans go through. of dirt for the side of a fairway, that dirt would weigh more than the surrounding 5-foot deep soil. It would slowly sinK into the garbage. So, before the first holes are created, the garbage itself has to be "sculpted" -yes, garbage sculpting is a real job - to fit the contours of the course. Only then would a fairly even layer of dirt be added for grass, trees and bushes. As a bulldozer rumbled past with a rugby shirt on the treads, Niewind laughed as he recalled a phone call he'd answered last week. A Burnsville jeweler said he , was on his way to the landfill - a 2.5 carat diamond worth $25,000 had been thrown away. "He said it was in a white plastic bag," said Niewind, standing amid millions of tons of mashed and rotting garbage. "I said that we had handled about 5,000 white plastic bags that day." Perhaps future archeologists will find it - bui only after much greater value has been recovered from the trash. Bob Shaw can be reached at bshaw@pioneerpreyss.com or 65]-?28-5433. ~i,1~y./ JOE ODEN, PIONEER PRESS