alaska begins its future of solid waste management

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WasteAdvantage Magazine February 2010 25

Landflls

Alaska Begins its FutureO Solid Waste Management

It seems only fIttIng that the state earnIng

the moniker as the last rontier might be slightly

behind the times when it comes to managing solid

waste. Alaska celebrated 50 years o statehood last year,

and while many gathered at picnics and other events

to lionize improvements to the states scant matrix o

roads, and the construction o schools, airports and

medical acilities, solid waste proessionals continued

in the resolve o making slow but steady gains in the

way Alaska handles its trash.

Extreme ReachesWhen it comes to inrastructure necessary in getting

that trash to proper handling acilities, Alaskas vast

dimensions are working against them. With an area

o 656,000 square milesmore than twice the size

o Texasthe state lays claim to 33,000 miles o

coastline, 3 million

lakes, 100,000glaciers and 40

active volcanoes.

In terms o solid

waste management, however, Alaska is comprised o

around 375 communities, only about 100 o which are

accessible by a meager 2,000-mile road system. That

means that any materials shipped in or out o Bush

Alaska, arrive by boats or airplanes.

As it is, getting the garbage rom the states

extreme reaches to adequate landlls may take

another lietime. But time is running out or many

o its remote communities. More than 50 years o

dumping, tossing and spilling has taken its toll, and

even now, solid waste continues accumulating at a rate

inundating many village dumpsites. While an obvious

solution would be to reverse the fow o trash out o

Bush Alaska, many villagers have ound themselves

swimming against the swit current o an economic

system that has provided or the transporting the

goods going in but not back out.

I think cost is one o the main hurdles, says

Ted Jacobson, Tribal Solid Waste Liaison, or theEnvironmental Protection Agency Alaska. Jacobson

assists the EPA under a cooperative agreement with

the Senior Services o America, Inc., and a partnership

with the Rural Alaska Community Action Program,

Although Alaskaremains as the onlystate operatingClass III landfllsopen pits receiving

less than 5 tons

per dayeffortsare being made to

implement an adequate

infrastructure and

reduce solid waste.

Let: Buckland, AKs landfll beore the cleanup.Right: Buckland, AKs landfll ater the cleanup(36 man hrs.- 150 gals. uel- excavator/dozer).Photos courtesty o Ted Jacobson.

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26 WasteAdvantage Magazine February 2010

Inc. (RurAL CAP) in Anchorage. It is a unique arrangement among the agencies

to capitalize on Jacobsons talents and his 15 years o experience in solid waste

solutions, but Jacobsons title has oten been whittled to Garbage Guru by those

who summon him to visit ar-fung villages in hopes that he can oer advice.What Jacobson and his peers requently nd themselves up against on their

visits also has ties to Alaska history. Shortly ater becoming a state in 1959, the

newly ormed government mandated the building o schools, which began a

race to ship supplies into remote outposts. In the 1960s, however, villages were

not the establishments they are today, which meant that small tugboats and

barges landed on shallow beaches or wallowed their way up ox-bowed rivers to

drop o building materials and other goods at small trading posts, sh camps

or other sites. As it turned out, many o the sites had been used only seasonally.

When schools came along, permanent settlements quickly grew around

them. An important consideration let out as the young villages took shape

were plans to deal with solid waste. In the absence o those plans, rural dumps

began bulging with scrap steel, asbestos, lead-acid batteries, drums lled with

old uel, waste oils, paints or hazardous chemicals. In the same dumpsites,

those materials have been mixed with household garbage and raw sewage. As

rural Alaska modernized, washers, dryers and other appliances ound their way

upriver, downriver or along the coast along with automobiles, snowmobiles

and ATVs. The packaging o the consumable goods going in, meanwhile,

evolved rom canvas and steel to cardboard, aluminum and an array o plastics.

More recently, the blend has come to include computers, cell phones and oceequipment. In the last 20 years, the waste stream has changed signicantly,

says Jacobson. It used to be organic waste, dead animals, biodegradable stu.

Now, its plastics, hazardous materials and electronic waste.

Dire DumpsitesToday, Alaska remains as the only state operating Class III landllsopen pits

receiving less than ve tons per day. Given the dire conditions o its dumps, Alaska

was granted primacy over ederal regulations. An estimated 95 percent o rural Alaskavillages use open dumpsites. Many o those consist o a shallow trench cut into the

tundra, or in many cases, waste is dumped on the surace or tossed into a tundra pond.

Whats worse, many o those same dumps lie within bounds o the

communities, and a substantial portion o those communities lie but a ew

eet above the water table. The leachate rom the dumpsites consists o

spilled diesel, waste oil, battery acid, sewage, a myriad o other chemicals and

hazardous household wastes that have contaminated water used or drinking

and subsistence needs. When the winter winds blow, plastic shopping bags

and other wind-blown trash escape the trenches and travel or miles beoresnagging on willows or other shrubs. Some dumps have incorporated chain

link ences in an eort to contain fying debris. In the summer, bears, dogs,

birds and fies visit the sites and vector the juices back into town. In an attempt

to reduce volume and keep fying debris at bay, dump res are common. Even

more common has been a propensity by residents to reduce household solid

waste volumes via burning barrels. In winter, when high-pressure systems orm

and temperature inversions and grip the land in cold, umes and toxins rom

the open burning in the village dumpsites and burn barrels stay stratied at

ground level in the still air surrounding villagessometimes or weeks.

I you look back to the 1950s in the Lower 48, says Jacobson, a lot o thedumpsites in rural Alaska are operating similar todayopen burning, minimal

or no compaction, separation or cover. Evidence suggests that the eects o open

Uncontrolled access and sel-haul in a tundra setting with ground water inches away.

Top right: Uncontrolled dumping and no equipment.Bottom right: Uncontrolled burning.

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dumpsites have caught up. Outcomes rom a 2006 study examining more than

10,000 women rom nearly 200 villages ound a correlation between low birth

weights, preterm birth and intrauterine growth retardation and proximity to the

open dumps. Other studies have linked inhibited sexual development among

teenaged boys and girls to their proximity to low-temperature solid waste burning.

Meanwhile, widespread anecdotal evidence suggests that the present management

o the rural waste stream has led to increased respiratory illnesses and other

sicknesses. There is a direct correlation with low temperature burning o solid

waste and respiratory disease, primarily among elders and children, says Jacobson.

Small StepsFor community leaders wanting to make changes in a strapped economy,

separating the old vehicles, snowmobiles, all terrain vehicles, boats, rerigerators,

washing machines and clothes dryers rom the tons o disposable diapers,

discarded animal viscera and other waste, seems like a good place to start. To

make a snowman, you rst have to start with a snowball, says Jacobson.

For some communities, the small steps have already led to notable gains. By

some estimates, nearly hal o Alaskas rural communities are without suitable

sources o potable water. As such, the costs associated with shipping in the

water rivals that o soda pop. That soda pop has replaced water in terms o

popularity has becomes blatantly obvious by mountainous accumulations o

empty aluminum cans. The large volumes o empty cans have since spawned

the development o a program designed to get the aluminum back out, sell it

in scrap markets and pass the prots back to the communities. The program,

Flying Cans, is the brainchild o Mary Fisher, director o Alaskan or Litter

Prevention And Recycling (ALPAR) in Anchorage.

Since its inception in 1988, Flying Cans has grown its presence to include 90

communities. In an average year, around 50 communities pack aluminum into

airplanes bound or Anchorage, says Fisher. The 2009tally o aluminum cans,as o November, came to more than o 26,000 pounds. The program works on

a unique partnership among about a dozen o Alaskas local airlines which have

partnered in the eort by donating empty cargo space on planes to

backhaul the cans to larger communities where larger reight airlines

pick them up or delivery to Anchorage. The program enables thoseliving in Alaskas remote communities that are o the road system

to save aluminum cans and sell them to the Anchorage Recycling

Center at the same price paid to those who bring cans in their amily

car, says Fisher.

Large-scale eorts to backhaul metals, mainly aluminum and

steel, rom rural Alaska began in the mid-1990s, when reight

companies sailing north to Alaska rom Seattle attempted

to increase their prots by hauling scrap metal south ater

delivering groceries and other goods along the states ruggedcoastline or ar up the rivers. Though it made sense that barges

returning to ports along the West Coast with metals would

bring more prot than the barges returning empty, the costs o

loading and unloading old vehicles or other scrap aboard the

bargesand the liabilities reight companies aced in the event that they lost

their trash in transitlimited backhauling ventures or years. The idea o

backhauling elt a renewed sense o optimism a ew years ago, when the price

o scrap steel and other metals appeared protable enough that some recyclers

considered chartering tugs and barges in hopes o bringing Alaskas scrap

metals south to large-scale recycling acilities. Since markets slumped in late2008, however, those companies have backed o and have put eorts on hold

until markets rebound and backhauling ventures again prove protable.

Reducing Solid WasteIn the meantime, environmental departments within many communities have

been staging tons o old equipment, vehicles, rerigerators and white goods or

eventual backhaul. In the short term, the staging accomplishes separation. As

or the rest o the trash, an increasing number o communities have incorporated

the use o burn units to reduce substantial volumes o garbage. The burn unitso the past couple o years operate much like an oversized wood stove, replete

with loading doors at the ront, drat vents near their bottoms and a smokestack

protruding conspicuously rom their tops. While earlier versions o the units

were merely steel boxes that kept burning temperatures low, the newer models

generate temperatures well above 1,400 degrees and shorter burn cycles, which

destroy much o the toxins. Jacobson says the burn units have been a popular

alternative to incinerators, which would require uel to run them. Diesel delivered

to many villages runs upward o $7 per gallon. The units can reduce 150 cubic

yards o trash in around eight hours. Theyre stand alone, low tech and have no

energy consumption, compared to incinerators, he says.

In Jacobsons exploration o other ways to reduce solid waste volumes, he took

on an experimental project in 2008 to nd out how to improve rural dumpsites

with minimal labor, equipment and uel. The Denali Commission, a ederal

unding organization that provides training and implementation o solid waste

project in Anchorage, had set aside $600,000 or solid waste upgrades in 14

communities. Jacobson served as technical advisor. For his test community

he chose the village o Buckland in Alaskas ar northwest corner. With a

population o 385, Buckland exemplied many rural communities: there had

been very little dumpsite maintenance. There was no controlled access to thesite. The waste was not covered. Water ormed pools at the site. There was solid

waste mixed into the nearby sewage lagoon. I had visited previously and saw

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28 WasteAdvantage Magazine February 2010

A tundra pond dumpsitethe old traditional way to dispose o waste.

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WasteAdvantage Magazine February 2010 29

the conditions there, says Jacobson. I wanted to nd out what it would

take to consolidate, compact and clean up a generic dumpsite.

Within a ew phone calls, Jacobson was able to secure the use o an

excavator and a crawler dozer that had been used during a recent water

and sewer project in the village. He few up a ew weeks later, red up the

equipment and put his expertise to work. Thirty-six man-hours and 150

gallons o diesel later, the dumpsite had transormed rom a single mound

o mixed solid waste to several our-oot high peninsulas o trash and an

access route throughout the dump. Jacobson adds that the project added

at least ve years to the lie o the dump, and i administrators at Buckland

implement his suggestions o controlling access, recycling, backhauling,

separating solid waste and adding a separate pit or dead animal carcasses,

lie o the site could extend even longer.Jacobson points out that another dumpsite cleanup project in the village

o Eek, near the mouth o the Kuskokwim River, has also realized signicant

results with minimal use o equipment. The majority o the Eek cleanup

was done by hand, says Jacobson. The groundwater is within inches o

Eek. That meant that much o the work had to be done in spring beore the

tundra thawed. Jacobson adds that the bulk o the solid waste was relocated

to a more suitable area and that workers there were able to compact it and

add cover.

Implementing an Adequate InfrastructureAs or the uture o solid waste management in Alaska, Jacobson believes in

the eventual ormation o adequate inrastructure. Implementing a program

through a ee structure could be nearly impossible at rst, says Jacobson. But

i we can use grant money to create inrastructure then gravitate toward a ee-

based system, that could be a good way to maintain a successul, sustainable

solid waste program. Jacobson adds that Alaskas vast geographythere

are ve dierent climate and terrain conditionswill require individual

solutions, and hes optimistic, overall. No one shoe ts all, says Jacobson.

But with orward thinking and patience, there is light appearing at the endo the tunnel. | WA

Ted Jacobson is Solid Waste Tribal Liaison for the State of Alaska. He is assisting

the Environmental Protection Agency under a cooperative agreement with the Senior

Services America inc. (SSAi) and the Senior Environmental Employment (SEE)

Program. Ted can be reached at (907) 865-7363 or via e-mail at tjacobson@

ruralcap.com.

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2010 Waste Advantage Magazine, All Rights Reserved.Reprinted rom Waste Advantage Magazine.Contents cannot be reprinted without permission rom the publisher.

alaska begins its future of solid waste management

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