retired outlaw

Our school class once toured it and we watched as they would yards of rubber band-like material around a solid ball core.  At the time it was fascinating but after I experienced factory work, not so much!

BF Goodrich 

found a home for them

50% reduction in intake of a certain waste stream.
$150-200K/ month reduction in revenue
That material still has to go somewhere, and whoever will take it will be able to charge more per ton because disposal sites are becoming limited. I'm referencing one facility, and this reduction is taking place in... let's just say more than 2...
There's a lot of money there for the taking. Someone will take it. It's time for someone to look at the generators, look at how this stuff is solidified, and make the generators dry it out. Class 3 landfills are the best place we have to dispose of this stuff, but they don't have the equipment or the material to change the composition of it. Landfills are the destination, they accept and contain the waste. There has to be some kind of consistent regulation to require the generators to make this material safe for a landfill. They aren't purposely creating a material that is this hazardous, it just meets the current criteria, passes the current tests required to enter a landfill. The problem is there is more of it than ever before, and as more and more municipalities push recycling, there is less MSW to mix with it. The percentage of wet waste to MSW continues to climb, and that is what makes a landfill dangerous. If it were solidified a different way, with a more porous material that made it drier and facilitated drainage, then I wouldn't have a problem with it.
When landfills slide, or you have a catastrophic event like Greentree, everyone looks at the landfill. Mistakes were made, no doubt, but if that material was dry in the first place maybe that wouldn't have happened.

Thanks to those who paid attention to the cause of his death.

There have been massive changes where I work this year, and no one will say it, but I know it is a direct result of what happened in Pennsylvania. Good has come of it 

common sense tells me that more than someone should be charged & held accountable in the death of there employee      

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...

well they didn't get the guys off the hill soon enough osha report said ADS did not provide safe working environment. No crap we were saying that for a year
 

the sad story is the whole sludge thing was the problem but ADS was only wrong because of bad business practices so to say. When the marcellus shale drilling started around here some politician that prob got a nice chunk of change from the gas industry made the changes to the sludge cap at PA landfills. Well someone pushed it anyway prob had to go through pa senate or something of that nature, but prob just pushed through because no one had any idea it was even an issue, the one of many problems with government. 

union would never work we have too many old schoolers but that is right we do need one. 

What I'm saying is when the problem started to be noticed the union would have protected the workers from retribution for not going up their till it was safe. These workers where working in conditions they new wasn't safe. Afraid of losing their jobs if they said anything. A union would have gave them protection.

I don't want the core issue of this tragedy to become a union debate. A union wouldn't have prevented that collapse. I don't blame the collapse entirely on the owners of the landfill, it's an industry wide problem. There are certain materials that make a landfill unstable. Those materials bring in a lot of money. There are no rules set in stone on how much you can take, or how to integrate that material into a landfill. The onus isn't even completely on the landfill. The producers of that material could be forced to change the consistency of the material, which would also be very expensive. Many landfills are currently sliding to a certain degree. Greentree is the first implosion of an entire cell I have heard of, and things were done there that compounded the problem, but the root cause of that collapse is a festering problem that gets worse every year. As more municipalities push to recycle and compost normal municipal solid waste, less MSW is available to mix with the special wastes to stabilize them. That's fine, recycling and composting are good things, but when the makeup of a waste stream changes that dramatically, steps need to be taken to ensure the safety of the operators. I want Greentree to be a warning sign to the industry, not just the owners. These landfills are designed to hold this waste forever, we are still learning what happens at the bottom of a pile that is 200 feet tall and 30 years old, and the current waste stream is far different than what it was then. The entire industry needs to take a deep breath and look at what we are doing to the sustainability of our landfills. Greentree should be a watershed moment

My hope is that OSHA will be more concerned with possible future issues. Thats not the first landfill to slide, but it's the first I've heard of that took a man with it

This is my fear of a union. I wouldn't want that as an operator, and I definitely don't want that as a manager. Typically when a union gets a foot in the door down here, that's where it starts. A disgruntled employee.
That's why I run my landfill the way I do. My men respect me, and I respect them. I was an operator once, too, and I treat them the way I would want to be treated. I take ownership of my operation, and my men take ownership of their jobs. We don't want an outside group to be the mediator.
I would imagine the operators there are the same way. If they are like a typical landfill, they have all been working there for years. I see much less turnover in the waste industry than I did in construction. Most operators I know at my landfill and others have been there 10+ years. Chances are the operators were there before the current owners were. That's why I don't understand the silence...

You are right. There needs to be noise from the employees.
https://www.nlrb.gov/rights-we-protect/employee-rights

Good time to form a union. Don't settle for a no walkout clause either.

Those two "composite liner system" bubbles are what is under almost every MSW landfill. They take months to construct, and cost millions of dollars per cell. You are talking 10-15 acres, typically, of processed clay, composite liners, geosynthetic liners, protective cover, leachate lines, etc...
All of that is to protect groundwater from the leachate produced by the waste we accept. Uncontaminated construction debris doesn't produce leachate, so it is allowed to be dumped into unlined cells. Those cells are much, much cheaper to construct, so the dump rates are much lower. Even if we were to drop our rates to get more of that material, which we have done, large MSW landfills are spaced far apart. No one wants them in their back yard, so typically you only get an MSW landfill where you can show a need. C&D landfills are everywhere, so even if our rates are lower, most customers would have to drive further to get to us, and the hauling fees would outweigh the savings

Ridgway Sisters Taking Steps to Reopen Hallton Hilton
 
HALLTON, Pa. , AUGUST 2, 2016(EYT)

those elk are not paying atten. to the signs

those elk are not paying atten. to the signs

those elk are not paying atten. to the signs

those elk are not paying atten. to the signs

those elk are not paying atten. to the signs

those elk are not paying atten. to the signs