Hundreds of discarded trash bins and a closed sign stand at the entrance to the Bristol, Virginia landfill. The city stopped accepting trash here last fall, and now ships it to a private landfill across the state line in Blountville, Tennessee. But there’s decades of trash still left in Bristol’s landfill, and years of work ahead.
Bristol signed two settlements earlier this year, one with the state of Virginia, and another with Bristol, Tennessee. Both agreements include details for how Bristol, Virginia will get their landfill’s smell under control, including a promise to reduce the stinky emissions by next March.
Most of the mitigation work they plan to do was recommended by a panel of engineering experts who traveled to Bristol in March 2022, at the request of the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.
“The panel concluded that it exhibited signs of what’s called an elevated temperature landfill,” said Mark Widdowson, a professor of environmental engineering at Virginia Tech who was chair of the panel.
These high temperatures, of 131°F or higher, are a sign that the landfill is failing to break down waste the way it’s supposed to do.
According to the EPA there are at least six known landfills across the country with elevated temperatures. Many, like this one, were built deep below the ground, decades ago. For various reasons they suddenly started putting out foul smells and gases.
This Bristol landfill was built inside a former rock quarry beneath the water table, which is problematic, said Widdowson. “You don’t want landfills full of water, number one, so you have to keep it dry.”
Also because it’s deep beneath the surface, it was filling with heat, and gases. “That heat has nowhere to go, except up. And this is why quarries are problematic as landfills,” Widdowson said.
After the panel released their report, Bristol stopped accepting trash.
Bristol’s mayor, Neal Osborne, said they’ve had fewer complaints about the smell.
They’ve almost completed the first phase of their project, building a new sidewall odor mitigation system inside the pit, to seal the smell. By next spring, they’ll cover it with a plastic seal, kind of like shrink wrap.
But all this work will cost the city $60 million, much of which is falling to ratepayers.
“It’s an incredible cost,” Osborne said. “To the city, and ultimately to residents because that’s where locality’s money comes from.”
Garbage bills went from $33 a month to $48. Osborne said the increase would have been much higher, but they were able to find grants for other parts of their budget, like the police department.
All this trouble with their landfill has made Osborne even more aware just how finite of a resource space is. “The stuff that by and large people are throwing doesn’t break down, won’t break down in our lifetime: aluminum cans, plastic this and that, baby diapers,” Osborne said. “The stuff you’re producing, by and large, will be here when your grandkids are here. Trying to find a place to put their trash.”
Long-term, the plan is that that years from now, all this work will lower the temperature inside the landfill pit. Then, Bristol can put a final cap on the site.
Osborne said he’s hopeful that now the two lawsuits are behind them, and they’re making progress on the landfill’s odors, both Bristols can focus on revitalizing their downtown, and improving the quality of life for residents on both sides of the state line.
