hipower

Today Faith Marie is 1 month old. ❤️ 🙏🏻 ❤️ We are told that her odds of making it to a yr old go up if she made it to a month old. I say she has the same odds as the rest of us. When God calls us home, we go.
 

Great picture!  Glad to hear she's doing well!
Penn Highlands NICU is superb!  One of my grandsons will be turning five in a few weeks, and if it wasn't for the efforts at the Penn Highlands NICU, he may never have made it!

This is the time of year where we give our PowerPoint presentations to the big wheels, show them what changes we have made that are going to make us better the following year. I have an entire slide devoted to one topic. We were finally allowed to make drastic cuts in one specific area, and after only 8 months there is a noticeable difference in not only stability, but also a reduction in costs associated with the after effects of that material once it is placed in the landfill. 
These changes were not made just at my site, but were mandatory nationwide, with severe penalties for anyone violating the new policies. It will never be said out loud, but there is not a doubt in my mind that the ripples that caused these changes originated from a little mountain town in PA.
Thank you for making noise

I'm convinced that all of the missing socks turn into Tupperware lids that do not fit anything. 

It would be hard to pay for entertainment like you found here.

Yeah, we've lost some of the better ones over the years. Either Steve bans them or they go away mad. 

It would be hard to pay for entertainment like you found here.

Very true. And y'all got a new pet monkey

I'm sure that we all agree that you had the best of intentions and we appreciate the knowledge that you shared in helping us understand how this tragedy happened and how it could have been avoided. You are not to blame for anything at all, you've been a breath of fresh air with a great sense of humor that the vast majority of members appreciate. 

This is how I found this website. I heard about it the day it happened, and the only thing that came up on my Google search was a thread by mr.d.  The original thread got lost when the site changed the format 
 I came here with the best of intentions, I can only blame myself for everything that followed...

Field hands have been screaming for years. As these landfills get older, taller, and heavier, we are beginning to pay for the sins of the past. Current regulations were passed in 89, which in the life of a landfill was not that long ago, but waste streams have changed drastically in that time. If you are in the field you can see what is happening, but it doesn't show up on a spreadsheet or earnings report. It's a shame that this had to happen to get upper levels to notice, but at least they have noticed, and in our case are making changes.
I'm taking half of a certain waste stream compared to last year. It's a budget killer to lose that revenue, and will cost me personally several thousand dollars this year, but next year I will move forward with a safer, more sustainable landfill. It was worth it

I'm so glad that safety has improved for you and others in the industry. And thank you for all of your insight into this tragedy from the very beginning.

The other landfill thread made me think about this one. There have been drastic, sweeping changes across the country in hundreds of landfills that I know of this year.  Millions of dollars in business has been turned away for the sake of safety.  Everyone in the industry knows what happened up there, and knows why it happened.  If any of Billy's friends or family are still reading this thread, just know that my job is now safer after the tragedy up there. This isn't how any of us wanted it to happen, but good has come of it, and will benefit thousands of people for years to come 

I don't guess there has been any news about this since the one year anniversary, but I wanted to fill you guys in on what is happening around the industry. Big changes nationwide this year, and the focus is beginning to shift from the landfills to the producers.  I have been on many conference calls, been in many meetings, talked to many drivers, and the most often repeated phrase is "that landfill up in Pennsylvania  "
 It may not be making much news up there, but it sent ripples across the entire country 

It has to catch the attention of someone outside of the landfills. These giant national waste companies are built around the trucks, the landfills are the destination no one thinks about. Its all waste, it all makes money. We get paid to pick it up and dump it. Unless you are in the landfill, you don't see what we are actually dumping, and landfill employees are less than 10% of the company's employees. The bonus structure is flawed, because it rewards 90% of the employees for punishing 10%. It's not even that they are doing it on purpose, most of them don't even know.
I will say that my company is pushing hard towards much more strict limits on what we can take, but not without pushback. It's also a voluntary move, so if we don't take it, that means it has to go somewhere. Someone will take that revenue, and the current laws regarding solidification aren't sustainable. I'm a conservative, I don't like a lot of regulation, but it's time for something to be done. This waste has to be disposed of. Class 3 landfills are the best place to dispose of it. Instead of relying solely on engineers and "wet waste studies", start getting the opinions of the blue collar guys that have actually been touching this stuff in the field for 20-30 years. Find out what makes good sludge good, what makes bad sludge bad. Standardize a method of solidification that makes this material safe in a landfill. Set limits on how much a landfill can take, and spread it out among all landfills. 
Heres another thing that hurts certain landfills, and I bet it applies to your area. Say you're a huge company that owns numerous landfills. You have two large landfills within 90 miles of each other, but one is in a town with a population of 1 million people and is right in the middle of town, surrounded by subdivisions, schools, churches, etc... It's the flagship of your company. Your other landfill is the same size, but it's at the end of a lonely road in the middle of nowhere, in a town with a population of 10,000. Which landfill are you going to send all the nasty, sticky, smelly sludge to? Little hint: one landfill is getting 5% sludge, the other is getting 30%.
There needs to be some regulation
 

Very well said LFG, great explanation of how the bonus system works in your location.

I'm still sad that this story just disappeared, but I hope that with the DEP investigation results released at least maybe the families involved can push a little further.
I'm posting today because it's been almost a year, and I'm reminded how I came to this forum in the first place. Bonuses came out today, and 60% of the bonus is dependent on making operating income budget. We didn't make budget. We reduced one specific waste stream by 20% last year because of it's hazardous nature, and the lost revenue in that one waste stream caused us to miss budget by over $1 million. I'm the lowest bonus eligible person on this particular totem pole, the only one that actually sees or cares what this waste stream does to a landfill, and it cost me personally $9000 this year. That's real money out of my pocket, not some corporate percentage of loss. I know the next 3 guys above me up the line, and they lost $17K, $29K, and $42K of their bonuses because of the lost revenue from this one waste stream. Staying in compliance, no safety violations, no EPA infractions, all of that combines for 40% of the bonus, 60% is making the op income budget. There are many more people further up the line that also lost, and you can bet much more money, and none of them understand why this waste stream was eliminated. To them trash is trash. Salespeople go out and pick up accounts for our trucks to haul, it all goes to the landfill, what's the difference? It all brings in money, we all benefit, right? I was the only one on the conference calls leading up to the decision to reduce this waste stream that was agreeing with the third party engineers that we needed to cut back. People were getting mad at me. This is the first year that I was in a bonus bracket this large, so it is the first time that I have seen that many zeroes erased from a check, but I understand why it was worth it. No one else does, and unless you spend time in one of these landfills and see what this s**t is actually doing to us, there is no way you could understand.
That's why I pushed this story so hard, that's why I made so much noise about a little mountain town a thousand miles away that I didn't even know how to pronounce. There were no nefarious motives, there was an opportunity to shine a spotlight on an aspect of an industry that affects people all over the country. To the friends and family of Billy, the guys at my landfill continue to remember you in their thoughts and prayers, and to the guys still working... Be safe

Right beside the Tesla batteries

Took about 6 q-tips to clean my ears and nose at the end of the day.
I've also worked at a couple of gold mines. If you want to hear about some scary chemicals in industry, do a little reading about how gold ore is extracted from dirt. Where is the public outcry for those companies to clean up their slurry piles? 
I think the power plants are just an easy target 

We looked at that, dedicating a cell to nothing but fly ash. The profit would have been less than half of the MSW rate for a more desirable material, but even at that cost the power plants came out cheaper building their own cells. You can't really mix it with sludge during the lower stages of a cell because, like fedup said, it makes an impermeable barrier. It turns to concrete and won't let leachate go to the bottom of the landfill, it pushes it out the sides. I know of one landfill in particular that had to go back with a rock hammer on a trackhoe just to bust through it to relieve the pressure. It would be good on a cap, but caps are a short term project once every few years, and fly ash is constant

Maybe they shouldn't have been labelled waste to start with. 

It would cost to much to solidify all the sludge with flyash. But capping a cell with it would be worth the cost in the long run.
 The big problem---- flyash used to be a waste product.  Now it has become a useful product.

I have some history with the use of flyash sludge and lime. If mixed correctly it will form a impermeable cap. In fact the Pa Dep actually used this mix  to get rid of harbor sludge from NY and NJ. They placed it in a coal strip job where I used to live.

Actually, from an operations standpoint I love those two. The issues there are ecological, but if they are contained properly they are very easy to work, and stable. It's like grading sand; wet it, pack it, and cover it as quickly as possible so that you aren't making dust and rain doesn't erode dirt down to the ash

First, my job is to notice it before my employees do. Second, if my lead operator said he was afraid to be on the hill, I would damn sure be concerned that something was wrong. If you want to play the scenario out, I would move the entire tipping operation to a safe area of the landfill, then I would call my GM, area Ops Manager, and area Environmental Engineer to come and evaluate why the hill was moving. That's called "differential settlement", and is a sure sign that one area is settling much faster than the rest of the landfill.
I'm not going to comment what the other guys should have done, hindsight and all, but you asked me what I would do, not the company I work for. That's how those questions should be asked on the other side as well...