Pubilshed 10/23/08
An equipment malfunction had garbage piling up at the Española Transfer Station on Industrial Park Road last week.
The malfunction occurred at the Los Alamos County landfill. On the afternoon of Oct. 14, the landfill’s compactor, which resembles a bulldozer, shut down, Los Alamos County Refuse Superintendent Leroy Chacon said. Chacon said the compactor’s cylinder head, a crucial component in the machine’s combustion system, cracked.
Chacon said the landfill is in the process of bidding out the repair work, and he was not sure how long it would take before the compactor was running again. He said the Landfill is still accepting Los Alamos County’s waste but will no longer take the North Central Solid Waste Authority’s. The Authority collects trash for Española and Rio Arriba County residents.
Los Alamos County and the Authority have a verbal agreement but no formal contract (the landfill takes the Authority’s trash for $35 a ton). Authority Manager Joe Lewandowski said similar agreements exist with government-run landfills in Albuquerque and Sandoval County. Calls to those facilities were not returned. The Los Alamos landfill is scheduled to close by the end of the year.
Rio Arriba County had explored the possibility of making its own landfill, but in the end it was decided it would not be cost-effective. Lewandowski said it would take $5 million and at least five years to open, and in 2004 it was estimated it would cost between $1.6 and $2 million a year to operate.
“We only average $900,000 a year transporting and landfilling it somewhere else,” he said.
Lewandowski said he got a call about the malfunction Tuesday afternoon, and because a contract with Houston-based Waste Management, a waste collection, processing and disposal company that hauled the Authority’s waste to Rio Rancho, recently expired and an agreement with the landfill in Santa Fe is still being worked out, the Authority had to start hauling waste to Moriarty.
“That’s why I had contracts with other landfills in place,” Lewandowski said. “It’s just part of the business.”
According to Authority documents, a five-year agreement with the Torrance County/Bernalillo County landfill in Moriarty was signed in 2004, but the Authority pays $45 a ton there (versus $35 a ton in Los Alamos), and drivers have to go farther. Lewandowski said the turnaround time (how long it takes a truck to haul a load and get back to the transfer station) for Moriarty is close to five hours, while Los Alamos was closer to 90 minutes. He said four trucks are each able to take three loads per day.
“It’s all about timing in this business,” Lewandowski said. “We’ve been playing catch-up all week.”
Lewandowski said the Authority increased the number of trucks hauling garbage, and by Thursday afternoon the pile that had accumulated was dwindling.
“We got piled up on the ramp,” he said. “We’re back on track now.”
While the ramp in Española was piled with trash, Lewandowski said measures to keep the public safe were put into place — the Authority placed dumpsters on the ground around the ramp. A pending agreement to use the Santa Fe landfill (a two-hour turnaround) would cost the Authority $30 a ton, and a landfill-only contract in Rio Rancho (a 4.5-hour turnaround) that is being considered would cost $24 a ton, according to Lewandowski and Authority documents.