Waste Management Takes Out the Trash

Nobody likes to see it, smell it or talk about it. But like it or not, landfills are a necessity for economic growth.
Waste Management Inc. operates the only landfill in Northwest Arkansas in Tontitown. The next closest in the state is the Yell County Landfill in Fort Smith, which also is maintained by Waste Management.
The Houston-based company affirms the Tontitown Landfill is as environmentally sound as possible and even has plans approved that will nearly double the landfill’s size, from 66 acres to 112 acres.
The few who do the most trash talking are business owners and developers, who may be looking to relocate operations or begin a building project in the region.
Waste Management is a public company with operations from Texas to Canada. It’s the leading provider of comprehensive waste management services, including residential and commercial, in North America. It reported revenue of $3.44 billion in this year’s third quarter.
The Tontitown Landfill contributes more than $6.5 million each year in salaries and local purchases. It also pays about $1.7 million a year in fees to local and state governments.
“The landfill is one of those essential utilities that you have to have to promote economic expansion,” said Jordan Johnson of Cranford Johnson Robertson and Woods of Little Rock, the public relations firm for Waste Management.
Although there’s competition such as Roll Off Service Inc. of Springdale, Allied Waste in Bella Vista and several other rural haulers, Waste Management claims to handle most of the waste from Northwest Arkansas and accepts 1,200 tons of trash per day.
For competition purposes, Waste Management declined to disclose rates or revenue generated from the Tontitown Landfill.
“There’s not a set rate,” said David Hausom, a governmental affairs consultant. “It’s like everything else, the more your volume, the better your rate.”
Draw Strings
While sometimes stinky eyesores, maintaining a local landfill facilitates growth in metropolitan areas by drawing in larger corporations which seek safe and convenient methods for waste disposal.
Johnson said it’s as critical of an infrastructure as schools, fire stations, police, streets, water and sewer.
“The landfill allows cost in a region to be managed,” Johnson said. “When companies come into a region, they want to see, ‘OK, where’s the rail? Where’s the highway? Where’s the water and sewer? They also ask do you have a landfill and a safe way of disposing of a large volume of waste?
“Well, we do.”
Waste Management owns about 600 acres southwest of Tontitown that consists of a Class 1 and Class 4 landfill. The Class 1 municipal solid waste landfill is permitted to accept non-hazardous household, commercial and industrial waste while the adjacent Class 4 landfill is for construction and demolition debris.
The local Waste Management has 14 roll-off trucks, 10 residential trucks, five front-load trucks and hundreds of dumpsters. It services about 162,000 residential pick-ups per month. Most are on a weekly basis, but not all of them.
Waste Management handles municipal solid waste from the cities of Springdale, Farmington, Johnson, Bethel Heights and rural areas of Benton and Washington counties.
The City of Fayetteville used Waste Management for its residential trash up until September, when Indian Country Investments put in the lowest bid to win Fayetteville’s municipal services. That subsidiary company of the Cherokee Nation uses a landfill in Stillwell, Okla.
Despite losing Fayetteville, Waste Management’s volume of trash continues to increase. It will soon require the landfill to nearly double its size with the expansion on the northeast of the current heap.
All of the plans have passed the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality’s strict standards. The ADEQ regularly inspects the Tontitown facility, which has the only double synthetically-lined landfill in the state.
“The ADEQ went through a lengthy process and we are pleased to be able to expand,” Johnson said. “That will again provide a stable and sound waste solution for at least the next 20 years.”
Sack It Up
While residents bag up trash and put it by the curb, few know where it goes from there.
Waste Management’s competitors truck loads to landfills across state borders — some into Oklahoma, others into Missouri — which increases the miles a driver is on the road and the opportunities for accidents.
That’s why Waste Management has safety meetings to start every morning, complete with stretching exercises and seatbelt safety tips for its 70 mostly flare-orange-vested employees.
“It’s also things like not double-siding, where we’re picking up residential on both sides of the street,” Hausom said. “We do not want to put any employees, your employees or our employees, at risk,” Hudson said “So anything to increase safety, we do it.”
Roll Off Service Inc. is one of the leading competitors in the region. It handles commercial and industrial trash collection, construction and demolition waste and also does scrap metal collection.
By unloading trash locally, Waste Management says it’s able to offer better rates with a better safety rating.
“It’s a safe and responsible thing to do for regions to take care of their own waste,” Johnson said. “That way, you can rest assured that it’s going to be environmentally sound.”
Trash Energy
Besides the current expansion, Waste Management also could employ a cutting-edge way of improving the Tontitown Landfill in the coming years.
At the company’s Two Pine Landfill in Jacksonville, which is the largest in the state, there’s a methane gas plant.
Methane gas is the result of the trash’s decomposition and can seep into the atmosphere if not burned off properly.
A flare, or incinerator, serves as the precursor for the methane gas plant, which uses methane from a landfill to power generators and produce electricity. The plant at Two Pines powers 6,000 homes in North Little Rock.
Tontitown already has a flare, which burns up methane before releasing it as 99 percent clean air into the atmosphere, but there are no immediate plans for installing a methane gas plant there.
“Most landfills let it go into the air, but the good ones, flare it,” Johnson said.
Waste Management does run recycling programs on a subscription basis, but have not been able to extend the service to rural areas, since lower volumes don’t justify running a truck at a reasonable price to customers.
“If we could figure out a way to make it work, we would do it,” Hausom said.
The Tontitown Landfill secures all of the waste by continually covering new loads with dirt, but does have trouble with one particular item.
The small, plastic bags from grocery and retail stores are so light that a stout wind can carry them “a mile away.”
Still, Waste Management maintains that it will continue meeting and exceeding the ADEQ’s standards at the Tontitown Landfill while providing Northwest Arkansas with a valuable and necessary utility.