Recycling, Waste Stream Changes Help Extend Landfill’s Life to 2113

SWAINTON – It is every household’s onerous task: putting out the trash and recyclables. For most it means dragging heavy containers laden with who-knows-what curbside. There, on the appointed day, a hefty compactor truck will arrive, those weighty cans will be emptied, and that will be the last time thought is given by the homeowner to the refuse.
In short order, that truck’s contents come under the auspices of the Cape May County Municipal Utilities Authority (MUA). For southern municipalities, the round-trip trek takes it to the transfer station on Shunpike Road in Burleigh. Those in the north go directly to the MUA’s Sanitary Landfill on the Woodbine-Upper Township border.
Overseeing the county’s solid waste and wastewater operations is MUA Executive Director Joseph V. Rizzuto, who assumed the post after Charles Norkis retired.
Three States of Matter
It could be stated that the MUA deals with all states of matter: solid, liquid and gas.
The Solid Waste program is responsible for retention of the county’s trash in its landfill which presently takes up 93 acres.
Through permission granted by the state Department of Environmental Protection and Pinelands Commission, the landfill was expanded and it is estimated that its life span will continue to 2113, if the current annual deposit rates continue, according to Rizzuto.
The Sanitary Landfill began operations in May 1984 on an initial 51-acre area. In Phase I refuse was placed in Cells 1A, 1B and 1C; the second stage Phase I of the Sanitary Landfill is a 42-acre area, containing Cells 1D, 1E and 1F. Cells 1A – 1F make up the 93 acres. 
The authority is currently disposing of solid waste in Cell 1F and anticipates doing so until the year 2020 based on annual municipal solid waste tonnages. 
Phase II (Cells 2G, 2H, 2I and 2J) of the landfill consists of 74 acres. A total of 167 acres is approved for landfilling activities. 
At current municipal solid waste tonnages, the MUA anticipates landfilling activity to begin in Cell 2G sometime in the year 2023. Between the year 2020 (anticipated life of Cell 1F) and the year 2023 (anticipated start of landfilling activity in Cell 2G), the authority will return to landfilling activity in Cell 1E until it reaches approved interim grade. 
At the present municipal solid waste tonnages, the authority anticipates the Sanitary Landfill will cease receiving solid waste for disposal in the year 2113.
The added life of the landfill can be attributed to operational changes made by the MUA due to the change of the characteristics of the waste stream. Recycling also plays an important role.
Keeping up with the load, a five-year, $12.99-million capital improvement plan will continue to replace equipment as it reaches its useful life for solid waste projects, Rizzuto added.
Since decomposing garbage produces methane gas, which is not allowed to escape into the atmosphere, the MUA captures it and passes it through generators to produce electricity at the landfill.
Wastewater treatment, another of the MUA’s areas of operation, involves sewage piped to facilities in Ocean City, Seven Mile-Middle Regional, Wildwood-Lower, and Cape May Regional. Those plants treat an average 31 million gallons daily for 14 of the county’s 16 municipalities.
Rizzuto stated those plants have sufficient capacity for treatment. Capital improvement projects were developed in the county’s Wastewater Management Plan to maintain that ability.
The MUA has developed a long-term, 20 year, capital renewal and replacement plan to maintain the regional wastewater treatment and ancillary facilities that total $241.1 million, Rizzuto stated.
Over the next five years the MUA has a capital improvement plan that totals $70 million.
Located close by the Sanitary Landfill is the Intermediate Processing Facility where ReCommunity has been contracted to operate the county’s recycling center through Dec. 31, 2021. That firm assumes the responsibility to sort the county’s plastic, glass, paper and metal.
Recycling is fickle, up one month as goods are in demand, down the next, as the world has a glut. Still, the MUA believes that by recycling the landfill’s life will be extended, which ultimately benefits the entire county.
“The recycling industry, as a whole, has had better days,” Rizzuto stated. The industry is commodity based and has fallen, “In some cases by 50 percent in the past four years.”
That dip, combined with rising costs at the facility from contamination in the recycling stream, puts pressure on the operator.
Although the county has gone “single-stream” for recycling, meaning recyclables can be mixed in the can; plastic bags have been singled out as a real problem at the recycling center.
The staff of the IPF has been “spending more time sorting and removing this contamination to maximize the quality of the commodity for resale,” Rizzuto stated.
Trying to educate the public about not placing recyclables in plastic bags is a formidable task, but one that is necessary.
“If we can reduce the plastic bags entering the recycling stream, the contamination rate will decrease and the frequency to which the IPF shuts down to remove plastic bags from the machinery will also be reduced,” Rizzuto stated.