Robert Massey, president and owner of Flint, Michigan-based Oil Chem Inc., has been accused by federal prosecutors of illegally dumping 47.8 million gallons of liquid landfill leachate waste into Flint’s sewer system in a known violation of the Clean Water Act, mlive.com reports.

According to the company’s website, Oil Chem Inc. provides nonhazardous waste treatment services, chemical management, and recycled cutting oil services for various industries.

According to reports, Massey is charged with directing his “employees to dispose of the landfill leachate through a hose from a tank to a sanitary sewer drain located at the Oil Chem facility, without treatment and in violation of Oil Chem’s wastewater discharge permit” from January 2007 to October 2015. At least on one occasion, waste was alleged to have contained PCBs.

Reports state that Massey had a wastewater discharge permit that allowed the company to dispose of treated oily wastewaters at the city’s wastewater treatment plant. However, the company did not have the authorization to dump landfill leachate, which it accepted from eight different landfills.

Oil Chem transportation manifests from the time detailed the contents and volume of leachate that was transported by tanker to the site.

Court records state that Oil Chem discharged “all or substantially all of the landfill leachate it received” around the close of business so that the waste could flow into the city’s sanitary sewer system overnight.

In 2016, the city of Flint cited Oil Chem with 30 infractions alleging misreporting of wastewater discharges as well as failure to report its handling of industrial wastewater. Also in 2016, authorities executed a search warrant at the site over beliefs that the company was improperly handling its industrial waste.

Massey is scheduled to appear Jan. 14 before the Eastern District of Michigan District Court in Flint for a plea hearing surrounding the charge.

The National Waste & Recycling Association (NWRA) has collaborated with the General Accounting Office (GAO) on a study of state “Move Over” laws.

Move Over laws vary by state but generally require motorists, when approaching certain vehicles stopped on the roadside to either move over, or if unsafe to do so, slow down to an appropriate speed.

“We were honored to work with the GAO on this important project for our industry. While every state and the District of Columbia have ‘Move Over’ laws, only 31 states have laws that include waste and recycling collection vehicles,” said NWRA President and CEO Darrell Smith. “Safety is the most important thing to us and that includes roadside safety. We hope this study will bring heightened awareness to this issue as we continue to advocate on behalf of our industry to enact these laws in the remaining 19 states and strengthen them in the states where they are already on the books.”

Among the findings in the report, the GAO found that despite education and targeted enforcement by states, public awareness of these laws remains low. The U.S. Department of Transportation, primarily through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Federal Highway Administration, continues to help improve the safety of roadside workers, including providing support in the areas of public awareness, training, funding, coordination and research.

The NWRA says it will continue to work with federal and state officials to raise awareness and educate the motoring public on the need to move over for waste and recycling collection vehicles as well as emergency and other covered vehicles.

Pests at landfills can wreak havoc on operators, causing problems such as nuisances to neighbors, operational complications and health concerns. Attracted to the yard and food waste commonly found at solid waste sites, pests ranging from rodents to birds will linger at landfills, leaving behind trash in nearby yards and damaged liners.

“I think the most important part of [pest control] is understanding the biology of the organisms you’re dealing with, whether it be deer or birds, and knowing when they’re going to give you the biggest problems, and then act accordingly or plan for that,” says Shane Latimer, project director for SCS Engineers, Long Beach, California.

According to Latimer, mitigating pest problems should always start with keeping up with site hygiene. By minimizing the amount of exposed waste and working in smaller areas, he says a site is less prone to having severe pest issues.

“The main thing that we see at [well-maintained] landfills is proper daily cover and good waste management in terms of ensuring that the waste is taken care of on a daily basis and not having such a large working face,” he says. “The smaller your working face, the smaller the area the organisms can get into. They’re after food, so the smaller the food area, the less of a draw there is. The other thing is if you have compactors actively working a small area, they’re more likely to deter the pests than when you have a large area that is basically open and undisturbed so the [animals] can feed in an undisturbed way.”

"The main thing that we see at [well-maintained] landfills is proper daily cover and good waste management,” –Shane Latimer, project director for SCS Engineers

Of the many organisms frequenting landfills for food, Latimer says birds are the most common problem. With high mobility and their tendency to travel in large numbers, birds can get in and out of waste fairly easily, picking up and hauling trash into neighboring communities near waste sites.

In addition, birds feeding at landfills tend to leave excrement throughout the site and surrounding areas. With the potential to carry more than 60 transmissible diseases, birds and their fecal matter pose a risk to landfill workers, creating a workplace hazard.

“In Oregon, for instance, E. coli is a stormwater constituent that is regulated, and is often associated with birds being at the landfill and utilizing waste as a food source,” Latimer says. “[Birds] will, what they call ‘loaf,’ which means they’re hanging out or using the landfill for roosting and that sort of thing. So, E. coli from them gets back into the stormwater and creates a compliance problem.”

THE USE OF FALCONRY

To combat these bird-related issues, an operator can use several methods, such as falconry, lasers and propane cannons. Falconry, which is an ancient practice where falcons or other birds of prey are trained to hunt or scare the birds, is considered the gold standard.

“In modern times, falcons used for bird control are pretty much trained to circle the area and deter the birds away, although they will occasionally make a kill,” says Latimer. “[Birds] don’t like seeing their friends die at the talons of some falcon, so they’re less likely to be there.”

Kort Clayton, the owner of Portland, Oregon-based Integrated Avian Solutions and master falconer, says falconry is the best approach to managing bird populations when they concentrate in unnatural ways, such as at landfills.

“When several thousand seagulls are at a landfill and that becomes their primary food source, it’s not good for them, and it’s not healthy at all. The right thing to do is to find a way to break that up and force them to go live natural, healthy lives—and you can do that with falconry,” he says.

According to Clayton, the first step when creating a falconry program is to have an expert come out and visit the site. Some factors he takes into consideration when visiting a site are the nature of the birds, the quantity of birds and whether it’s a seasonal or chronic problem.

“We try to figure out what [the site] really looks like and what they’ve done in the past,” he says. “If nothing has been done, then that’s one thing to factor in, but if they’ve already invested in managing the problem and have been unsuccessful, then we have a better understanding of what our starting point is.”

Clayton says a major benefit of falconry is that the birds don’t habituate to the birds of prey, or raptors, in the way they habituate to other forms of bird abatement.

“The raptors are always a real threat, and the birds instinctively understand that,” he says. “There is a predator in their space, and whether or not it’s chasing them, they’re intimidated by it and are cautious about it. If it does chase them, then they become really cautious about it and respond reliably every time the raptor is there. Over time, it can change their behavior.”

But while falconry is considered the most effective tactic for some applications, it’s not a perfect solution for every landfill.

“[Falconry] is really only for operations that have chronic and unmanageable problems,” says Clayton. “By all means, if you can manage your bird problem with a propane cannon or a laser system, you should do that because it will cost you less. But, for our clients, that won’t work.”

Clayton recommends for landfills struggling with bird challenges, to first start with the simple, cheaper solutions to determine if they are effective. If those methods don’t work and the problem persists, then falconry may need to be the next step.

DIFFERENT OPTIONS

For landfill operators seeking a less costly solution for bird control, Latimer says lasers can be a great option.

“We are working with a small landfill in southwestern Oregon that had major bird problems, which were causing an E. coli compliance problem. The site had investigated various methods to control the birds, including falconry, but they found it to be relatively expensive. At the time, I had been tracking the use of lasers to control birds at various agricultural sites, and it looked like the time had come to see if lasers might be effective for controlling birds at landfills,” says Latimer.

With typical costs for an automated laser estimated to be around $10,000 to $12,000, the high-intensity beams can be managed by landfill personnel and usually run a set pattern to deter birds from a certain area.

“The group that provides our lasers is currently looking into some deep learning techniques, kind of like artificial intelligence, where they are training a computerized system to actually follow the birds around the site. The system would know what a bird is and what it looks like, so the laser would be aimed at those birds in particular rather than just running a [predetermined] path,” Latimer says.

For now, though, Latimer says running patterns seems to work really well for most operators. When used at the Oregon site, he says the landfill experienced an immediate pest-control improvement, effectively cutting the number of the bird species inhabiting the site down to almost zero.

“It’s not a silver bullet, but I think lasers will play a major role in the relative linear future of controlling birds at landfills,” Latimer says.

As for propane cannons, these pest deterrents have been used to keep birds off corn and other commodities in the agricultural industry for a long time. The stationary “sound guns” cost roughly $300 to $400 and utilize propane gas ignition to create a loud shot-like sound to scare away birds, making it an easily accessible solution for bird control from a price and operational standpoint.

“The mechanism allows a very small amount of propane into the barrel of the ignition chamber of the cannon, and then it ignites that and makes a boom,” says Latimer. “It’s just on a timer, so it shoots one off every once in a while, but sometimes they’ll do three in a succession or break it up a little bit. What you don’t want is for birds to habituate to any of these control methods, and that’s one of the biggest problems—you want to make sure that you put together a program that won’t become useless in the next month or year because the birds just get used to it.”

This article originally appeared in the Nov. Dec. issue of Waste Today. The author is the assistant editor of Waste Today and can be reached at hrischar@gie.net.

The Chesapeake, Virginia-based recycling rewards program, Recycling Perks, has rebranded to EnviroPerks. The company says the new name better reflects its new, extended benefits program. With the addition of its Loyalty+ platform, EnviroPerks says its program has increased its savings potential for customers of waste haulers across the country.

EnviroPerks is a customer loyalty program that rewards its members for being loyal waste hauler customers. By providing added value in the form of discounts and rewards, customers of participating haulers can save more than they spend on their monthly hauling service, according to the company. Using an online interface, members use earned loyalty points to choose from hundreds of EnviroPerks rewards and thousands of no-points-needed Loyalty+ discounts.

EnviroPerks says rewards encourage good behavior and create customer loyalty. By applying this strategy to the waste industry, the company’s loyalty program gives users the benefits of savings on household expenses to encourage customer loyalty.

The program gives haulers an opportunity to differentiate themselves while encouraging customer loyalty, according to the company. EnviroPerks is working with haulers in a number of Virginia communities as well as in Denver and Colorado Springs, Colorado; Omaha, Nebraska; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and with Waste Connections in Nebraska and North Carolina, according to the company’s web site.

“We’re really excited about the relaunch,” EnviroPerks President Bill Dempsey says. “It’s a similar structure from the resident user side that we’ve had success with in the past, but by expanding the benefits, we’re making it that much more rewarding for users and effective for haulers.”

Users of EnviroPerks earn points that can be redeemed for rewards on the EnviroPerks website. Additionally, customers now have access to more deals on household expenses and items using EnviroPerks’ exclusive, points-free Loyalty+ platform. Savings on everything from essentials such as energy, food and insurance to extras like hotels and electronics are available, and members will find that their total savings using points on the EnviroPerks website and the Loyalty+ platform can easily surpass their yearly hauling expenses, according to the company.

“We think we have something really special on our hands,” Dempsey says. “We’re encouraging people to recycle more and enabling them to save huge amounts of money in the process. Loyalty programs are popular, but they’ve never developed for the waste industry.”