Good news and bad at the dump (Nov 28)
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
Madera County is getting ready to open a new cell at its Fairmead dump. Cell is garbagespeak for a hole in the ground into which garbage is dumped and mixed with soil until the hole is full. Then another one is dug, until the landfill is full, and then you go looking for another landfill, which can be quite a problem.
Of course, there is more to it than that, as there seems to be more to just about everything else. When the digging starts, for instance, the work is closely observed so the bulldozers don’t disturb any fossils that may be found. Most garbage dumps don’t have to make that consideration, but ours does, because besides being a landfill, it also is a paleontological site, an ancient graveyard for mammoths and other animals which used to live hereabouts. On Page A1 of today’s Tribune, you will see a story about the county’s having purchased land for a new museum which will be built near the landfill.
That is great news, because once the museum is built, it will attract scholars and others from all over who want to see what sort of creatures shared the earth in the past.
But what will not be great news, probably in another 20 years, will be that the Fairmead landfill finally will be full, and unless we in Madera County have found another site for our garbage, we may have to keep it in our backyards.
Recycling will help our landfill last longer, and if we started composting, it might last longer still, and the county is even looking at “vertical expansion” — which amounts to piling garbage higher in existing cells. But beyond that, we could find ourselves stuck.
