LOVELOCK - Thick white dust obscured the dozer as it pushed trash hauled from EP Minerals to the Pershing County landfill. Composed of diatomaceous earth (DE), the dust is a health hazard for residents and workers, according to landfill manager Mitch Nielsen.
Last week, Nielsen told Pershing County commissioners that EP is supposed to reduce the amount of industrial waste it sends to the municipal landfill. The company produces diatomite filtration and absorption products at its Colado Plant north of Lovelock. Employees are required to use respirators as dust protection while handling diatomaceous earth.
"We're going to try to work out a program with EP so we can eliminate the amount of debris coming to the landfill," Nielsen said. "It's waste DE, the actual product itself. Any type of dust creates a health hazard and on windy days, the way the wind travels up here, the dust goes in all directions. If we have the public here dumping their household trash, they're right in the middle of it."
EP officials have been receptive to solving the problem but 75 to 125 yards of trash continues to arrive weekly from the Colado Plant, Nielsen said. The landfill's limited space was intended primarily for household not industrial waste, he said.
"We're doing this with all industries and all of the mines," Nielsen said. "The landfill was originally designed back in 1992 for municipal household waste and possibly light industrial. Due to the size of our landfill and the way Nevada regulations work, we have the right to refuse anything other than common household trash. If it's hazardous materials, we don't take it because of the specialty practices that have to take place."
EP and other companies are being asked to separate their trash, such as pallets, plastic and paper bags, to help save room and reduce potential health hazards at the landfill, Nielsen said.
"We continue to talk to EP on some more waste elimination," he said. "We'd like to see some different practices like separating the trash before it gets here. EP has been very receptive, but being an industry with a lot of production it's hard to reduce everything."
EP Minerals Site Operations Manager Corey Hartwig said this week that a recycling program started about a month ago at the Colado Plant. It will take time to train employees to save plastic shrouds and paper sacks for recycling instead of trashing them, he said.
"We have plans right now to recycle all our nonconforming bagged material," he said.
"We'll take the contents out, bale the bags and send that to a recycling company in Reno."
In the next two to three months, EP's trash should be reduced to fewer bins of mostly household and office waste, Hartwig said. Imperfect DE products are supposed to be recycled back into processing and very little should be going to the landfill, he said.
"Any of the ore that's in those bags will be put back into our system," he said. "It will become finished products. Trash going to the landfill will be limited to what they would classify as household trash like janitorial waste from our breakrooms."
The company has four trash compactors for blue plastic shrouds and paper bags, said Sandy Kiel, EP purchasing coordinator. Pallets are sent to Reno for recycling or repair.
The economic impact of recycling on the company's bottom line is a concern, she said.
"Right now, we're trying to see how much this will benefit us and how well we can do without too much cost impact on the plant," Kiel said. "Once we get a full truckload evaluated, then we'll know if we're going to continue to do more."
Between the costs of trash compactors and the return on recyclables, Kiel predicts the recycling program will be a "wash" for EP.
"Really, the benefit is more for the Pershing County landfill," Hartwig said. "We're working with Mitch to extend the life of that landfill so residents don't have to pay an arm and a leg for the expansion that may be needed if they don't reject industrial waste."
Nielsen's reports on EP trash are helpful to improving the recycling program, he said.
"He gives us feedback on what he's receiving at the landfill," Hartwig said. "We've got to make sure it becomes our culture to recycle as opposed to past practice where it's just easier to throw it in the dumpster and off it goes."
An EP mine pit in the Seven Troughs area could become a landfill site, but that would take substantial investment, land owner permission and state permitting, Hartwig said.
"We are looking at ways to possibly turn that into a landfill to fit our needs," he said. "The landfill would be strictly permitted for our industrial waste like pallets, paper bags and off-spec materials that we would otherwise recycle but could landfill in the future."
Recycling in rural areas can be prohibitive for rural companies with the costs of shipping and the fluctuating value of recyclable materials, Nielsen said.
He's fighting his own uphill battle of developing a household recycling program at the landfill.
"Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of local companies that do recycling," he said. "It's hard to burden a private company with that cost but we can't take that cost. I can't spend my budget on making large amounts of product go away that we can't bury out here."
Recycling is no longer just an option but a need as landfill space runs low, Nielsen said.
There are already places at the landfill for metal, electronics, tires, wood, manure, paint and waste oil. Nielsen would like landfill users to separate and deposit trash in these areas. Otherwise he and a co-worker must try to separate the trash after it is dumped.
"There's no reason to bury any of that stuff," he said. "That's why we've taken steps to put in a waste oil tank and different areas of separation. We check the landing a lot for these items but the more cooperation we have from the public and private industry, the less trash we actually have to bury. The biggest goal is waste reduction and separation has to happen at the point of origin not at the point of delivery."
Nielsen commended Red Core Drilling for separating their trash before it was hauled to the dump from a recent property clean-up project in the Lovelock industrial area.
"They were great about separating everything," he said. "We got several loads of just concrete and dirt debris. They separated the pallets, separated the tires and that helps us immensely because once the stuff goes into the trash pile, it's really hard to separate. DE-covered trash has to be buried which defeats the goal of saving room in the landfill."
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