83°F
weather icon Mostly Clear

City’s expanding waste line worth bragging about

Just over two weeks ago, the Southern Nevada Health District approved Boulder City’s latest application to expand our landfill. This is the second expansion permit that I’ve helped the city to procure during my tenure on the SNHD board.

When I was a relatively new board member in 2011, we persuaded SNHD to approve the first one, a lateral expansion that increased our landfill’s size from approximately 10 acres to 60 acres, thereby extending its estimated remaining life by over 25 years to roughly midcentury.

This latest expansion includes not only a lateral component but also a vertical component. Laterally the landfill increased in size by 100 acres, bringing the total footprint now to 160 acres. The expansion also added 44 feet of vertical space to our permitted elevation. The result is a net increase in landfill capacity of almost 9.5 million yards, up from approximately 2 million yards to just shy of 11.5 million.

In terms of remaining useful life, that’s a really big deal. Nobody has a crystal ball, so it’s impossible to gauge exactly how many years this permit adds to the landfill’s life. But assuming we continue to input roughly 21,000 tons of waste annually, our landfill likely gained somewhere between 85 and 130 more years of viability, meaning that it could feasibly still be operating in the year 2175, over 150 years into the future.

And that doesn’t even account for advances in waste-disposal technologies, improvements in our recycling efforts, the possibility of excavating downward for mandatory cover material that otherwise gets imported and unnecessarily takes up space, and other such means of slowing the pace at which we fill up our landfill’s finite volume. In other words, Boulder City’s disposal site will almost certainly be alive and well long after you and I are long gone. And, in fact, long after our children, and our children’s children, and many more generations have come and gone.

Not having to ship our waste to Apex on the other side of North Las Vegas saves us hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars each year. So, each extra year of landfill life is extremely precious.

We also worked hard to avoid having a liner requirement imposed, since landfill liners can easily cost $100,000 or more per acre. Our staff and consultants also made a great case why our unique landfill should be exempt from almost all Subtitle D requirements, saving the city millions more in monitoring and collection costs. And they also finished the consultant portion of the project about $93,000 under budget. All in all, it’s safe to say that issuance of the expansion permit last month will end up saving Boulder City tens of millions of dollars over the decades to come.

For these and other reasons, securing this permit has been very high on my radar over the past few years as we’ve worked long and hard through the conceptualization, planning and permit application process. And, so, I couldn’t be more pleased that it’s finally come to fruition.

Subtle accomplishments like these that creep quietly toward completion usually don’t make front-page headlines. In fact, if I weren’t drawing this one to your attention, you’d probably never even notice and just continue taking our landfill for granted like I always did. But I feel like this one is worth highlighting, even if only this once.

I hope while it’s still fresh on your mind, you’ll go out of your way to join me in expressing a deep debt of gratitude to Scott Hansen and his Public Works staff and consultants for spearheading the project, landfill operator Steve Kalish and his BC Waste Free group for their insightful input and steady support along the way, and Dr. Joe Iser and his environmental health department at SNHD for their responsiveness and expertise from start to finish. We are very fortunate that they all stepped up and went to bat for us throughout this project.

Expanding waste lines aren’t something that I normally like to brag about, but in this case, I definitely think an exception is in order!

Rod Woodbury is mayor of Boulder City. He has been serving on the City Council since 2011 and is the president and managing shareholder of his law firm, Woodbury Law.

MOST READ
LISTEN TO THE TOP FIVE HERE
THE LATEST
Army veteran helps foster children

Most cities and states have chambers of commerce that promote, well, commerce.

Birds and trees and forests and stuff

Okay so, I know I am not normal. It’s true. And it’s something I have embraced as I’ve gotten older. I just don’t have what anyone might describe as “standard” human wiring when it comes to the way I think and the way I see the world.

We all benefit from Eldorado Valley

Last week, Mayor Joe Hardy shared details in his opinion piece (“The Gift that Keeps Giving”) about Boulder City’s purchase of more than 100,000 acres of the former Eldorado Valley Transfer Area from the Colorado River Commission in 1995.

Back-to-school lessons in gratitude

This week is back-to-school week in Boulder City, the first time in 27 years that I don’t have a child in public schools.

Unhappy with lawsuit

Unhappy with lawsuit

Eldorado Valley: The gift that keeps on giving

Boulder City may be considered a small town with a population around 15,000 people, but our land mass of 212 square miles makes us the largest city by geographic area in Nevada and the 41st largest in the United States.

Letters to the Editor

Choosing the right market

Communicating best with love

Our hearts contain consciousness that is most apparent when we enjoy love in conversations. The more we stare at screens instead of faces, the less we feel this love. Shared understanding arises from our intimate, interpersonal conversations. Healing arising from loving communications is what America is missing at this time.

Call me Mr. Greenthumb(ish)

A couple of weeks ago I was up in Northern California visiting relatives when I got talking to my aunt Joan about her garden this year. I then shared my triumphs and failures in the world of gardening. I’m wondering if some of you have had similar experiences.