By Juliana A. Torres
Staff Writer

Nine miles south of Holopaw, a compacted mound of trash 230 feet above sea level is one of a few places in Florida where beach sand contaminated from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill could end up.

The landfill, owned by Omni Waste of Osceola County and called the J.E.D. Solid Waste Management Facility, is qualified to participate in the impending cleanup from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill merely because of its size.

“We're one of two facilities that can take that kind of volume of waste in Florida,” Omni Waste District Manager Matt Orr said.

Most municipal or county-run landfills are much smaller than the facility near Holopaw, designed only to handle the waste of its immediate residents. The J.E.D. Solid Waste Management Facility is different. Open five and a half days a week, the facility takes in 6,000 tons of waste a day, dropped off by 350 trucks from Orlando and the Tampa area and from as far away as Broward, Pasco, Sumter and Brevard counties.

The facility has only received a precursory e-mail from national agencies currently dealing with the spill, warning of the possible cleanup waste that could be coming its way should the oil hit Florida beaches, Orr said. Depending on where the oil comes up on shore, the resulting waste would go to the Omni Waste landfill in Osceola County or a similar Waste Management facility in Okeechobee and possibly Pompano Beach, he said.

“If it hits in the Tampa area, (and) more back toward the north, I would say, 90 percent of it, it would come here,” he explained. “If it goes south … you're probably more apt to see it go to Okeechobee.”

While the size and scope of the cleanup is unprecedented, the cleanup itself is nothing new to the industry and nothing the landfill can't handle, Orr said.

“Really, the only thing that would keep it possibly from coming here would be the parts per million, in other words, how much oil is actually in the sand,” he said. “We have a threshold, once you get to a certain parameter, or so many parts per million in that soil ... it then becomes a haz waste.”

Florida doesn't have a hazardous waste facility, with the closest being one in Emelle, Ala., Orr said, but too much oil in the sand would keep the Omni Waste landfill from being able to accept the waste. The facility takes precautions against accepting waste it can't handle. For every 1,000 to 1,500 tons of waste brought to the landfill, a new tested sample of the soil must be provided to ensure it meets the Florida Department of Environmental Protection standards for the facility, he said.

“They have to continue to prove to us that that soil is below our parameters as far as our permit is concerned with FDEP,” Orr said. “Rest assured that anything that's accepted into this facility will go through the same mechanisms that we put everything through because the last thing we want to do is (lose) our permit based on something like this.”

The giant mounds of waste are built starting with seven layers of lining in a what's called a double composite class 1 lining system, and the pieces of the liner material in between each cell are welded together to encapsulate the waste so it doesn't ever touch or harm the environment outside it,” Orr said.

“Basically, at the end of the day, you end up with a big Ziploc bag, but it's a million times stronger because of the material,” he said.

Between the liner and the raw trash is a two-foot protective layer of sand and then a layer of select waste, all built above sea level. A piping system runs underneath it to catch rainwater that filters through the trash. The rainwater takes about 30 days to finally collect  in a leach pond set up next to the mountain of waste. Sod is installed along the backside of the slope to guard against erosion.

“We're doing everything we can to help prevent that and protect the environment,” Orr said.

The facility is permitted to build up the landfill to an elevation of 330 feet above sea level, and only a 3-to-1 slope is allowed. Too steep, and the trucks, hauling up to 25 tons of trash, won't make it to the top. Because of that, expansions have to progress outward to allow for a higher elevation and the change happens rapidly, Orr said.

“We're always changing back and forth and shifting where we're putting waste at, building roads. This thing progresses,” he said. “We're always moving, always going. It's a revolving door.”

The facility has enough land for about 30 years of expansion for waste at its current volume, but the facility is already looking at expansion down the road, Orr said. Among its future developments is a possible partnership within the next two years or so to harvest the methane gas, which it currently just burns off, from the bottled up part of the landfill, he said.

The next cell, or area lined and built up to envelop more waste, is already under construction and due to be finished within the next six weeks.

“I could probably not have to build a cell for probably about two and a half years, but I don't like setting myself short. One hurricane will fill that up. One soil job like this right here will fill this up,” Orr said, referring to the potential Gulf spill waste. “We always have to be ready to meet that need. The last thing we want from a business standpoint is to say, 'Hold on, we gotta build a new cell before we can take your waste.’”

That's especially true now, as the facility waits in anticipation of the potential oil spill waste.

“It's a hurry up and wait. We know there's a big plume of oil out there. Heaven forbid, I don't want it to come to Florida, but if it does, we're going to be ready,” Orr said.