Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 8, 1993 TAG: 9310080100
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-4 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But celebrating a new garbage dump?
"We are proud of the new facility, and we just wanted to show it off a little bit," said Garry Griffith, environmental manager with Georgia-Pacific.
The Bedford County paper mill is inviting the public to a ceremony today at 1 p.m. to do just that.
The 30-acre landfill is located on company property in Amherst County, directly across the James River and accessible by the company's own bridge. Only Georgia-Pacific's waste will be buried there, Griffith said.
It's one of a handful of new industrial landfills in Virginia constructed under strict federal and state requirements. And it took three years to pull it off.
In August 1990, the Amherst Board of Supervisors denied the company a special-use permit to build a landfill, largely because of citizens' worries about the dump.
"Just the normal NIMBY - Not In My Back Yard - concerns of local residents," Griffith said Thursday. "We didn't do a very good job the first time of satisfying those concerns."
The company hired an environmental public relations firm to explain that the landfill would have no impact on residents. A year later, the board approved the permit.
From there it went to the state, where the process went smoothly, Griffith said. Construction began in January.
By building its own landfill to dump its waste, Georgia-Pacific will remain competitive. Commercial tipping fees for industrial waste in the region run between $35 and $40 per ton, not including hauling fees. By comparison, the landfill will cost Georgia-Pacific about $10 per ton, he said.
As part of the new requirements, the company has lined the dump with impermeable plastic and installed ground-water monitoring wells and a system to collect runoff that filters through the garbage.
The company will dump about 140 tons of garbage per day, including office waste, boiler ash, wood waste, construction debris and dried sludge from its waste-water treatment plant.
In addition to its ongoing program of minimizing waste and reusing material, Georgia-Pacific plans to:
Burn dried sludge to supplement fuel for the boilers.
Use dried sludge as an intermediate cover material at the landfill.
Recover wood pulp from waste water to reuse in the mill.
"We're doing quite a few things to preserve this valuable asset," Griffith said.
Georgia-Pacific employs about 300 people in the manufacture of corrugated paper for boxes.
by CNB