Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 16, 1994 TAG: 9409290005
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Taped to the door of the cinderblock building is a handwritten sign: "Please wipe feet! Thank you."
It seems an odd request. This is, after all, just a dump - the old Roanoke Valley landfill on Rutrough Road. Everywhere is exposed dirt, acres and acres of Virginia red clay. Underneath is garbage, tons and tons of stinky Virginia trash.
But people apparently pay attention to the sign. The office floor shows only a few rust-red footprints.
In the corner are two plastic bags, full of dirt. In another room, little pieces of dirt sit on a scale. Dirt is the focus here - how wet it is, how loose or compact, how deep, how dense, how full of rocks, how permeable.
"This job requires a lot of soil testing," explains Trent Smith, project manager for Draper Aden Associates. His firm is the consultant for the Roanoke Valley Resource Authority, which closed the landfill this spring when the new one at Smith Gap opened.
But closing the gates didn't mean the end. Far from it.
In June, the authority began a five-month, $1.5 million project to entomb 20 years' worth of pizza boxes, broken mirrors, tires, toothpaste tubes, newspapers and everything else that, in polite company, is called municipal solid waste.
There's already 2 feet of dirt covering all the old garbage. But new state rules require localities to cap their old dumps with a plastic membrane, or a 3-foot layer of dirt that meets strict measurements to seal the landfill from rain and moisture. The idea is to prevent water from seeping through the garbage, picking up toxic chemicals and polluting groundwater.
The authority chose the dirt cap, which is less expensive. The actual dump is about 61 acres of the total 250 acres at the site. That translates into about 400,000 cubic yards of dirt - the equivalent of 40,000 dump trucks full.
Draper Aden contracted with Branch Highways Inc. to do this dirty work. Every day, workers in huge earth-moving vehicles scrape up 5,000 cubic yards of soil from other areas at the site and dump it on the landfill area, reshaping the hilltop that nature spent thousands of years making.
They've hit rock at a couple of places - boulders 6 feet across that have to be removed because they could destabilize the cap. That's slowed them down some, Smith said, but the weather has been pretty good.
Valuable topsoil is being piled up and saved for the final layer over the cap.
Smith says the cap will exceed state standards, which require that the top 18-inch layer be of a certain density, and the bottom 18-inch layer be even denser. The hydraulic conductivity, or permeability, must be low enough that it would take a drop of water about 31/2 years to seep through, he said.
To ensure the cap passes muster, workers sample the soil every 50 feet, at three depths. That means about 3,600 soil tests.
When it's complete, there won't be a square foot of flat surface, Smith said. The terrain will slope, sometimes gently, sometimes steeply, to force water to run off, rather than sit on top of the landfill and soak in. Drainways will funnel the runoff into ponds, where the sediment will filter out and the remaining, clear water will be piped into nearby creeks.
In addition, probes will be installed around the perimeter to monitor for gases, including methane and carbon dioxide, that emanate from rotting garbage. Groundwater monitoring wells were put in several years ago and will continue to be tested, along with the gas monitors, for the next 30 or more years.
\ When Roanoke proposed the landfill in the early 1970s, residents in the area were mortified, recalled Richard Flora.
What? The city wants to bring its garbage to our pristine corner of Roanoke County? Flora, then serving on the Board of Supervisors, said the two localities were locked in annexation battles at the time.
"We had every reason in the world to turn [the city] down, every reason in the world," Flora said. But some county officials saw past the politics to the larger public health and safety issue, he said. Besides, the county was running out of space at its own dump.
Partly to appease the community, the city promised to turn the landfill into a park when it was full, Flora said.
In the meantime, however, Explore Park was born, right next to the landfill, and Rupert Cutler came to town as its executive director. Cutler, a veteran of the national environmental movement, had his own idea: use the old dump as a demonstration of how ecologically damaged sites can be restored.
He contacted his friend John Cairns - a world-renowned environmental biologist and Virginia Tech distinguished professor - who assigned one of his graduate students to study the possibilities.
The Roanoke Valley Resource Authority liked the idea, executive director John Hubbard said, and dished out $24,000 for the research.
As a result, almost the entire site will be planted in native prairie grasses and 15 species of wildflowers, a mix that should control erosion, as well as provide food and shelter for wildlife and something nice to look at.
"The landfill can't just be out of sight, out of mind," because it's adjacent to the Blue Ridge Parkway and Explore, said Mara Sabre, the graduate student who planted several experimental plots last year. The National Park Service is planning a spur road from the parkway into Explore right through the landfill property, although not over the actual dump.
The standard mix of plants used by the Department of Transportation and other entities that routinely disturb land surfaces has low nectar content, low forage and low appeal to butterflies and birds, Sabre said.
She came up with a mix of legumes, grasses and wildflowers, including black-eyed Susans, purple coneflowers, big and little bluestems, red and crimson clover, sunflowers, evening primrose and others that will reflect the biodiversity of Southwest Virginia.
It's a risk, Sabre acknowledged, because it's new. There are not enough long-term study results to conclude that this mix of plants will hold the soil well enough to protect the landfill cap. But the first results look promising.
It's also more expensive than the standard reseeding - about $35,000 more, Hubbard said. But the old landfill fund has enough money, he said.
"If it doesn't work, then we reseed it with the standard mix. If it does work, then we're happy. And it'll look nice," he said.
Explore and the landfill authority may be cooperating on another ecological restoration project, one that grew out of a squabble between the two.
During the past year, rain washed garbage and silt from the landfill into a creek that runs through Explore, which is hoping to gain national prominence someday as an environmental education mecca. Hubbard said the garbage was cleaned up, but excess silt still threatened the health of the creek.
"They totally screwed up that end of the park," Cutler said. "I don't want to have warfare with the resource authority," but Explore is refusing to pay an $8,000 tab for landfilling some construction debris.
Hubbard said the authority has not waived the fee.
In the meantime, Explore is working with Tech to come up with a restoration plan for the creek to present to the authority.
Cutler is also negotiating with the county, city and the town of Vinton - the actual owners of the property - to lease just the top of the old landfill for Explore's use.
For example, visitors could follow hiking trails and read signs describing how the beautiful prairie was once a garbage heap, he said. Explore could also host Civil War re-enactments, Native American powwows, or the Scottish Highland games at the landfill.
Perhaps a fitting finale - to dance a jig on the grave of our disposable society.
by CNB