LFG

Thanks Katie, I hadn't heard. Better, but probably less than a month's worth of trash. Wait until the lawyers get involved... 2 interesting things to me in that article: 1. required to submit a written “Root Cause” Report. What will this report say, and will it be made public? Who determines the actual cause, and if witnesses dispute the findings, what then? 2. Limit municipal sewage sludge and approved non-hazardous waste with flowable characteristics to 15% of the monthly scaled tonnage, with a maximum of 20% of the total scaled tonnage on any one day Finally. I have been screaming this for years, but why only Greentree? This should be a national standard, especially the "on any one day" note. Even with a company policy of 20%, that is calculated monthly, so that number can be as high as 40+ on any one day as long as it averages out by the end of the month. If this story goes quietly away, it won't be the last.

I sat through a very lengthy conference call this morning. The hammer is being dropped from on high about the volumes of wet waste accepted. There is a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth because the reduction in revenue will cost a lot of people a significant portion of their bonus. It will cost me personally several thousand dollars if the revenue isn't made up with something else. Good A certain incident north of me was specifically referenced. The good news is certain companies are paying attention and reacting. The bad news is that it isn't a federal law, it's a voluntary business practice. When we turn it away, it will have to go somewhere...

I don't know, I've never supplemented light. I just let them go through the molt and resign myself to the fact that eggs will be few and far between during the winter. As long as I get enough to hatch a few dozen chicks each month I'm fine

Love the names i wonder if there's any correlation between body type and aggression. My black rooster with the same type is pretty aggressive. I normally won't tolerate that, but 13 girls are 100% fertile and he makes pretty babies. My blue is built like Captain, and he's got a great disposition. I'm getting no eggs from about 70 hens right now, it's the short days. Length of daylight affects them more than temperature. That's why I like to always have some young girls coming into lay in the fall or winter. They will usually lay straight through the first year. They should start laying any time now

That one furthest to the right is gorgeous. His hackles are pure copper. The front left is the least desirable for show, but a good looking bird. He has a bit of what is called a halo, those lighter feathers in a ring around his hackles. He also has a better tail angle, the prettiest one on the right is carrying his tail a little too high. Of the two in the middle, the one on the left has better color but his tail is very thin. Was that the buttless wonder? The one on the right is tall and lean like his daddy.

Not yet, I'm going to start squeezing them soon

I just saw this, been gone for a few days. My first question would be where is the movement? If it is in the same area that slid before, that's not good, but not unexpected to me. If it is in an adjacent area that hasn't fallen, or at the active working face, then alarm bells should be going off. Something underneath all of that weight isn't right, and it covers a much larger area than the original collapse indicated. To answer your questions, I will say that it is not unheard of for landfills to shift, but those landfills were not built correctly. There are almost 2000 Class 3 landfills in the US, and only a handful have slid. Of the ones that I am aware of, the causes can be traced back to what I originally said in February. Yes, it's time for more strict regulations on what we put in our landfills, and how those materials are handled by the individual landfills. Hopefully another person won't have to die to make the industry pay attention to what is happening up there

Yes, landfills do tours. It's a big part of trying to keep the neighboring communities involved. We try to do at least one a year

I wouldn't think leaves go to Greentree, it's in the federal regulations that yard waste is not to be accepted by a class 3 landfill. Is there a smaller landfill near town? Some class 3 landfills will have a smaller C&D landfill on the same site, but not attached to the lined landfill, that could be the case there. I don't know what PA regulations would be on composting. That will be the next evolution in landfills, separating and recycling waste streams. Some places do it now, but it's not profitable. I expect the federal government to make it a law one day. One coastal landfill here in SC composts all food waste, which is then used to cover the landfill when it looks like dirt. Landfills are a finite space, and it's getting harder and harder to get new landfills permitted. I think that one day recycling won't be a choice, it will be a necessity. Until you spend time in one of these large landfills, you can't imagine how quickly they grow

I hate egg eaters, that's a tough habit to break. We are right at 24 weeks on our birds, and I've had Marans take 26-27 to lay. Hopefully by Thanksgiving

Did you ever decide if the egg was from your marans? I still have not gotten one yet. Should be any day now

Large Class 3 landfills like mine aren't allowed to accept any kind of yard debris, leaves, limbs, stumps, etc... The intent is to encourage recycling. C&D landfills can take yard waste, but many of them have their own mulching stations set up, and will give the mulch away. That was a great idea to ask for leaves, with all of my chickens I don't know what I would do without leaves. Have you looked under "free stuff" on Craigslist? This time of year I can usually find a few people giving away bagged leaves. Good luck

From what I hear this story is not over. The last I heard DEP had another driller in taking samples. I wanted to post today because I actually met with one of our sludge producers this week for the first time at their facility, and I have a better understanding of where it comes from, how it is solidified, and why certain materials have to be used. This will be kind of a long and boring post, but for anyone wondering what sludge actually is I will try and explain it. Wastewater treatment sludge is easy to visualize, it's just whatever settles to the bottom of a treatment pond, and it makes up about 40% of our sludge intake. The rest is classified as "industrial sludge", so in my mind it was coming from the back end of a plant as the sludge I see. I asked our hauler if he would give me a tour of the facility, because we have to work with each other on haul times so I'm not bombarded with more than I can handle in a short period of time. Sometimes this puts our hauler in a bind, so I wanted to see what he was up against. I was surprised to learn that his facility isn't producing the sludge, he is taking liquid waste from all kinds of industry, solidifying it, then sending it to the landfill. When I say liquid waste, I mean almost any liquid you can think of. Oil, ammonia, shampoo, milk, all different kinds of liquid chemicals. He said almost every manufacturing process produces liquid waste on some level. His facility receives these liquids and what can be recycled, like oil, is recycled. All other liquids are hauled in tankers, or in 50-100 gallon totes. These liquids are dumped into a "solidification pit", a concrete lined pit about 15ftx15ftx10ft deep. The next step is to add a binding agent, and this is where the dangers of sludge in a landfill begin. Sawdust is commonly used, and I love it, but the problem with using sawdust is it doesn't totally bind the liquid. If only sawdust was used, the trucks would leak from the facility all the way to the landfill, about 45 miles away, so other binding agents have to be added. One option is a cottony looking material that soaks up the liquids, and that works for me because the liquid is squeezed back out in the landfill by the weight of the equipment and the weight of the trash stacked on top of it. Picture it like a saturated sponge. The problem there is you still risk trucks leaking en route, so another agent they use is binding polymers, basically powders that lock the liquids. This is the stuff that makes sludge so hard to handle, so dangerous if it isn't mixed properly. The very thing that makes it safe to haul is what makes it dangerous in a landfill. It's not like a sponge, it doesn't release the water. It never dries and stabilizes, and if too much is placed in one area it makes an impervious layer that will trap other liquids either above or under that layer, creating those invisible underground ponds that I've described before. This is why I want the story of Greentree to come out. If it is proven that sludge was responsible for that collapse, the waste industry needs to take a long look at what it is, and what it is doing to us. Liquid waste will always be generated, and it has to go somewhere. Modern landfills are the best option we have at this time, but the workers in those landfills have to be protected. When "wet waste" studies are done, they are done by engineers, and those results are shared with upper management. The field operators are not brought in to the discussion. Things that look good on paper don't necessarily translate to good practice in the field. One of my engineers came to me after one of those studies, excited to tell me they had proven that the "moisture retention capabilities" of the polymers were very high. To the people watching the bottom line, what that means is less leachate generation, less liquid at the bottom of the landfill that has to be hauled off and treated. An engineer doesn't think about what this waste that never dries does to the surfaces we work on every day, and how those initial savings in leachate generation turn into expense exponentially for years and years after the waste is dumped. You have to dig up bad areas and repair them, you have slides that if not repaired turn into exactly what happened at Greentree. You have odor issues because of gas migration, and lawsuits have been settled for millions of dollars with neighboring communities. The biggest issue of all is the instability it causes, and the dangerous conditions employees have to work in if it is not handled properly. There needs to be a national discussion about how this liquid waste can be safely disposed of. You can't dump free liquids in a landfill, so it will always have to be solidified in some fashion. I want the industry, regardless of the company you work for, to take a look at this issue and make common sense decisions that include input from the people that actually have to handle this material. It can't be fixed by a spreadsheet. If the Greentree collapse doesn't get everyone's attention, then nothing will. If it is swept under the rug and disappears quietly, it will happen again

Really???!!! I've been checking every day and haven't seen one yet. I would guess the marans laid it. Very often my young ones will lay the speckled eggs, you got a few of them, but the color evens out darker after a month or two. I look at it like a paint sprayer that isn't fully functional yet I would love to see the Mother Earth News Fair, but I think the closest one to me was about 2 hours away this year.

1st year layers start medium then go to large-XL. By year 2 you will get XL with a few jumbos. The color stays when you boil them, and they are incredible for baking

Petee should have some in a few weeks

Thanks. It's almost not fair, the only way to beat these chickens is with more of these chickens My wife said "There's probably some little old lady that has won that division for the last 20 years that hates you now"

I still haven't gotten eggs from the girls yet, but I'm hoping by November. The Upstate fair is next week, and tomorrow I'm dropping off a dozen of the mamas' eggs for the brown egg division. Won the blue ribbon last year

My !!! had more to do with the way you chose to phrase your statement

Bon!!!

Have you tried that with your chickens? I wind up with a mix that is about 60% grass/40% dried leaves. It is great to absorb moisture from rain, so it never turns into that mushy nastiness that you get from chickens on dirt. It also kills 90% of the odor that one would normally think of at a chicken farm. People comment all the time on how little smell there is in my penning area.They turn it so much that it ends up looking like a 6-8 inch layer of brownish black fine mulch by the time I clean it out in the spring

Oh, I have a mountain of a compost pile All grass clippings and leaves go in my pens, the chickens add fertilizer and turn it rigorously, then every spring that layer is cleaned out and put in the compost pile. I learned the hard way not to put it in the garden the first year

Thanks, I'll try that

It will be covered with kale and collards all winter. The chickens will eat more than I do