Landfill Closure Marks 'The End of an Era'

The hundreds of seagulls that incessantly scavenge the amorphous mound of trash at the Palo Alto Landfill seemed entirely unaware Thursday that after 80 years of continuous operation, the dump was closing, and it was time for them to move on.

As the birds dodged a thundering yellow earthmover, a small line of cars inched forward to take their turns unloading their trash. Landfill Manager Ron Arp, surveying the activity from atop a nearby ridge, was excited about the man-made hill being transformed into parkland but was nonetheless subdued. He had, after all, just said goodbye to two heavy-equipment operators.

“It is a solemn day,” he said. “We are eventually laying off all of the staff except two people.”

By the end of the year, nine more crew members will be laid off, leaving only a skeleton crew of two people—a landfill technician and a coordinator—to oversee the transition of the landfill to a pastoral meadow.

The two equipment operators who worked their last day today were uncharacteristically silent, Arp said.

“They were very quiet and reserved, and they kind of … they knew this day was coming for a long time,” he said.

Arp remains hopeful, however, that the remaining crew members will be able to be retrained and transition to other city jobs.

During its regular operation, the landfill accepted approximately 120 tons of garbage every day, including 60 tons of yard trimmings, 20 tons of concrete and enough soil to keep the grade of the hill in accordance with its planned design.

That design, incidentally, was so alluring that last fall the City Council put the landfill on a fast track in order to get it converted to parkland as quickly as possible.

“We’ve been in a fast-fill scenario since September,” Arp said.

Mike Sarter, interim director of public works, said the first thing residents will notice is that the landfill will be covered.

“They will no longer see garbage out there or debris,” he said.

The gates will be closed to the public while that cover is installed. The “cap process” will includes bringing green waste and dirt onto the site in order to create a healthy soil for native grasses, he said.

The cap will also include piping with wells for leachate—a hazardous soup of byproducts leftover from the landfill—as well as for methane, which will be piped over to the incinerator at the water treatment facility and burned.

Once the cap is deemed safe according to State Solid Waste Management Board criteria, native species will be planted on the 51 acres, and the space will be annexed to adjacent Byxbee Park, almost doubling that park’s size.

“Once this is all capped and approved by the state,” said Arp, “which is hopefully by the end of 2012, if not the beginning of 2013, this all turns into parkland, and residents can enjoy a 126-acre park.”

As for Arp, his duties as landfill manager are ending, but he will remain in the same position and be in charge of the contracts for building the cap and installing the leachate and methane collection systems.

“As the old saying goes,” said Sarter, “landfills never close. We have a 30-year commitment after the closure of the landfill to maintain the infrastructure.”

For Arp, the final day of collection at the landfill marked a major turning point in Palo Alto history.

“It’s the end of an era,” he said.