Two major factors behind the shrinking life of New Hanover County’s landfill

WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) - Two major factors have environmental experts concerned about the shrinking life of the county’s landfill: population growth and major storms

Few people think about where their trash ends up once they throw it away, but if you live or work in New Hanover County, odds are it all ends up at the New Hanover County landfill.

The northern property has been covered with a liner and sodded over because it’s full. At more than 155 feet it’s the highest point in New Hanover County.

When the southern side of the landfill was permitted in 2015, experts thought it would last us 90 years.

“A lot of folks just said we don’t have to worry about it because it’s not gonna be a problem in my lifetime or maybe even my children’s lifetime, but I’m here to tell you it’s everybody’s problem now,” said New Hanover County Environmental Management Director Joe Suleyman.

Now, the best case scenario is it lasts 28 years, and that’s assuming our region sees three percent population growth. While you’d think the influx of new residents is the biggest threat to the life of the landfill, it’s the natural disasters that aren’t factored into that 28 years that worries Suleyman the most.

“Hurricane Florence was basically like taking five years of waste in a few months,” said Suleyman. “Things like wet carpet, moldy sheetrock, things people are pulling out of their houses, of course, the vegetative debris alone. We calculated at one point that it would fill a football stadium up — including the end zones, 27 feet deep in just vegetative debris.”

The landfill can’t be made any bigger as it’s bounded by the river on the east, a creek on the north, 421 on the west and an industrial complex on the south. Given the legally required setbacks from parks, waterways and residential neighborhoods, there won’t be another landfill built in New Hanover County.

“We said ‘OK, if we can’t build another landfill here what technologies are out there?’ ‘Can you convert waste into energy? That’s an evolving technology and very exciting but we don’t wanna put all of our eggs into the basket because it’s still an emerging technology and it hasn’t been demonstrated on a large commercial scale,” said Suleyman.

The county is investing in top-of-the-line equipment and training to be as efficient as possible and compact more waste into tighter spaces, but the lack of space is a critical growing pain sanitary workers can’t tackle alone. It’s going to take everyone reducing their consumption, reusing goods, and recycling what we can to move the mountains of trash on our hands.

The landfill has several projects in the works to plan for growth, including a new consumer drop-off site. The need for capacity in the not-so-distant future also prompted staff to begin working on a comprehensive solid waste management plan that will eventually be presented to the board of commissioners.

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