Here's a look at how one Florida landfill gave itself some breathing room.

If you're like most people, you've never seen the inner workings of a landfill. Most assume it's simply a dumping ground for our waste, and if you happen to live near one, you probably wish you didn't.

But most would never guess the level of sophistication with which a top-notch facility operates — nor the amount of machinery that is needed to keep such an operation running smoothly. The reality is, most landfill operators work very hard to maximize every square foot of capacity they've been allotted, while trying to be a good neighbor by taking steps to keep odor and noise pollution to a minimum.

One such landfill is operated by the Palm Beach County Solid Waste Authority (SWA) and serves the residents of Palm Beach County, Fla. The SWA has operated a large system of integrated waste facilities — including a large landfill — at its current site in the city of West Palm Beach since 1989.

West Palm Beach is home to many of America's rich and famous people. Its beautiful climate, economic growth and recreational opportunities make it a desirable place to live for the approximately 1.4 million people.

As such, the SWA has seen its operations grow to be able to meet the demands of a developing community. In a typical day, the SWA sees 250 to 300 of its waste transfer trucks come in and out of its facilities — and each has roughly a 20-ton capacity. As the trucks are filled, they either go directly to the landfill or to the authority's waste-to-energy, vegetation processing or recycling processing area.

"It usually depends on the lines of trucks waiting to dump at the authority's incinerator — but if they get too many sitting there and waiting to dump, we'll bring them out here directly," says Doug Galbraith, assistant supervisor with the SWA.

To effectively manage the county's waste, the SWA system combines a waste-to-energy plant, the landfill, a vegetation processing facility, a compost facility, two materials recycling facilities, household hazardous waste collection facilities, and a network of five Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) transfer stations.

Palm Beach County SWA's recycling program is world-renowned. The site frequently hosts others from waste operations around the world — looking to mimic its system. The recycling program covers composting, newspaper and aluminum at its large recycling facility.

An innovative part of its integrated waste system involves incinerating garbage to produce power. The garbage is hauled into the SWA's incineration complex on a series of belts and conveyors. From there it is shredded and processed before being incinerated. With rising garbage collections, the plant is always processing the maximum amount of garbage, which is approximately 3,000 tons to 4,000 tons a day. The SWA sells enough generated energy to the Florida Power & Light Company to power the equivalent of 30,000 area homes.

With such a multi-faceted organization, there is a need for numerous specialized machines. For example, in the composting area, the SWA has a Komatsu PC200LL-7 material handler excavator loading and moving mulch. In the landfill area, you'll find wheel loaders, excavators, compactors, and crawler dozers.

But the dozers are the landfill workhorses — managing the steady influx of garbage — and it takes a tough machine to handle the rigors of the landfill environment. The newest is a Komatsu D375A-5 dozer equipped with a landfill package.

With the increase in waste intake, the SWA decided it needed to upgrade one of the machines in its dozer fleet. When it was time to purchase, the SWA worked with a Komatsu engineer who came and met with the team at SWA to discuss their specific needs for a landfill dozer.

"We were already familiar with Komatsu machines," says Matt Chapman, equipment maintenance supervisor with the Solid Waste Authority, "and the first Komatsu dozer that we purchased was a D275. Currently, we have a D155, the D275 and a D375 working in the landfill."

The 525-horsepower, D375A-5 crawler dozer has the capacity to push increased amounts of garbage, and its operating weight of 148,382 pounds makes it a more effective compactor. Since it came on-site in October 2005, the SWA's D375A-5 already has around 1,000 hours on it.

"Before we sold and delivered this machine, we talked to the customer and really tried to find out what they wanted and listened to their ideas," says Rich Smith, product manager, Mining Crawler Dozers for Komatsu America Corp. "And we still do, because we believe that nobody knows an operation better than the people running it. So if they have a suggestion on what works, we're very open to listening to that and trying to work with them — whether we end up designing the final product or they decide to take it elsewhere."

When the SWA made the final decision to purchase the D375A-5, it went to Tom Draper, salesman with Linder Industrial Machinery, whom it has been doing business with for over 10 years.

"What prompted us to go bigger is we're continuing to take more and more garbage every day here in the landfill because although we have the waste-to-energy facility, it's constantly at capacity," says Galbraith. "So, we're getting more and more garbage, and the D375 gives us more capacity to handle it. It's the biggest dozer we've ever had, and we think that we'll continue to purchase larger dozers."

Operator training was also important.

"Komatsu recommended the operator training, and we brought the trainers in and let the operators talk to them," says Linder's Draper.

The D375A-5 is used primarily for covering and closure activities in the landfill, so one of the special requirements the SWA had for the new D375A-5 was its blade. It wanted a custom-made, semi-U blade that was capable of effectively pushing huge amounts of garbage.

The blade that was built for the D375A-5 was specially ordered through Linder Machinery and was designed to be most effective in a landfill setting.

"The only complaint we've had from the operators is that we actually had the blade built too high so that they couldn't see very well," says Gary Vernati, senior mechanic with the Solid Waste Authority. "We had to put some holes in the center of it to increase visibility, but now we know for next time."

Vernarti adds that preventive maintenance is an important part of the overall operation.

"We think we've got a top-of-the-line program as far as preventive maintenance goes," says Vernati. "We do all preventative maintenance early to account for the harsh conditions. When the manufacturer calls for service intervals of 2,000 hours, we do it at 1,000 hours. We also dedicate a truck to just going around and washing out the dozers' radiators and fans," he adds, noting that common problems that dozers encounter in this environment are plugged up radiators and fans.

For the most part, the guys in maintenance are mostly responsible for making purchasing decisions relative to new machinery.

"I would say it's probably a little different from other places," says Chapman. "In other places, the operations department will order machines, and then maintenance just has to kind of live with it."

The maintenance department's thorough inspection program includes a special focus on the undercarriages of the dozers, as they are the biggest cost concern. On average, the SWA expects its undercarriages to last between 4,000 and 5,000 hours.

Particularly hard on the undercarriages is the ash that is put in the landfill from the incinerators. The ash is used as a cover for the landfill garbage piles — saving on soil costs.

"We try to stay on top of it," says Chapman. "We've found in our environment with this ash — which most people don't have — the ash eats out the dozer undercarriages. And to make matters worse, this year has been extremely dry in the region, making the conditions even tougher on the machines."

On the other hand, wet weather can oftentimes increase the workload of the D375A-5. If the weather makes the ground too treacherous, the trucks can't back into the landfill nearly as far, and have to drop off their loads much earlier. The dozers then have to push the loads much longer distances — sometimes 200 yards to 300 yards to the work base.

On average, the SWA keeps a dozer eight to 10 years before it starts looking for a replacement.

"At that point, the maintenance is almost costing you more than what you can buy a new one for," says Chapman. As its current fleet ages, the SWA has ordered another D275AX-5 to help ease the burden of increasing demand.

When the West Palm Beach County Solid Waste Authority first opened its current landfill site, it was thought that it would provide the area with enough dumping capacity to last until the year 2012. But now, after aggressive site modifications to increase capacity, it estimates that the same site (taking into account the current pace of population growth) will reach capacity in the year 2027. This is a testament to the careful management and aggressive recycling initiatives that the SWA employs, and one of the many reasons why it is considered a leader in waste management.

"The D375," says Gaibraith, "has given us some breathing room."

Staff
November 20, 2006
Dixie Contractor