Since the 1970s, the Alcoa/Maryville/Blount County Sanitary Landfill has sat off Long Powers Road in Friendsville. The facility takes a range of materials from household garbage to wreckage from demolition, sorting waste into categories and sending it to the appropriate site to be stowed and buried.
Now, after years of operating above capacity, landfill staff have plans to expand. A proposed adjustment to the footprint of one of the facility’s lower-safety cells for storing waste would add more than a decade of life to the site, buying time for staff to draw plans for even further expansion.
Demand has grown about 7% annually since 2020, according to Alcoa Director of Public Works and Engineering Shane Snoderly.
The proposed plan would cost about $2.5 million, although that price tag would cover more than just expanding the storage cell. Staff could carry out assorted small adjustments to the facility and also move the machine used for burning brush and wood brought in by the community.
Although all three local governments share access to the facility, which is administered by Alcoa, the landfill itself would pay for the project.
Space
Garbage at the landfill generally goes into two broad categories. Class one garbage, which includes household waste, is more likely to permeate the local groundwater and has to be sealed into the landfill’s pricier, more secure cell. Waste like demolition wreckage and old furniture is safer for the environment and goes in cells designated for classes three and four.
The problem is that the landfill ran out of space for classes three and four in 2020.
“We started the permitting process to expand onto that in 2019,” said Snoderly. “And we all know what happened in 2020.”
Not only did the pandemic put a hold on the landfill’s plans to expand to meet demand, but it also increased demand itself. People stuck at home often cleared out their garages, generating additional waste as the landfill slowly reached capacity for that kind of debris. With nowhere else to turn, landfill staff began putting demolition garbage in the valuable class one cell, taking up costly space.
Kelly Hembree, solid waste manager for Alcoa, said that’s because the landfill is a public service.
“Regulation-wise, we can just say we can’t take any more of that waste,” said Hembree. “But as a community service, no, we’re not going to do that. We’re going to take it even if we’re going to put it in an area that costs us more, because we’re a municipally-owned landfill.”
A series of setbacks including a change in engineers means a planned 18-month turnaround for the project became several years, but landfill staff are now in the process of gathering approval to expand the footprint and height of a dormant cell devoted to class three and four waste.
The plan, Hembree said, is to add about 80 feet to the cell and increase the pile height. Although that might not sound like much, she said that kind of waste packs in well, and the expansion would extend the life of the cell by about 15 years.
Future
One of the benefits to the delay, Snoderly said, is that the landfill likely won’t have to issue a bond to afford the project. The facility is run entirely by the money brought in through tipping fees, and staff have now been setting aside cash for years. That means the possibility of going through the project debt-free.
There’s also plenty to be done to extend the life of the current cells further. The landfill recycles about a third of the waste brought in, Snoderly said, beating the state’s requirements. But Hembree said people in their own homes can sort their waste, allowing staff to save valuable class one space.
“A lot of people think of this as a dump,” she said. “It’s not. This is a sanitary landfill, and there’s a difference.”
After sending additional clarifying information to the state, Hembree said her staff are waiting to hear back before their engineer can move further on the project.
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