• January 2, 2013
• By Jim Johnson

 

Working at Alaska's largest landfill is not for the faint of heart.

"It's challenging. No two days are the same," said Jim Brown, superintendent of the Anchorage Regional Landfill. "Everything we do is dependent on the weather."

When the weather turns truly cold, landfill workers stick to the basics of keeping the facility open and operating for the 1,200 tons or so of trash sent to the facility each day during the winter.

A skeleton crew comes in extra early to clear the landfill roads of snow and warm up the heavy equipment so it's ready to go when the majority of staff arrive, Brown said.

Cold and snow are a given and so is the darkness that makes up most of the day in these parts during the winter.

"We'll get cold snaps, they will go on a month, that are subzero," Brown said. "That takes a toll on your equipment. … You get used to it, but it takes its toll."

Landfill equipment, which sits outside, has to warm up for 30 to 60 minutes before it is ready to start pushing around trash, said Mark G. Madden, manager of engineering and planning for Anchorage's department of solid waste services.

Heavy equipment operators work in heated cabs as they push the contour trash at the working face, but when mechanics have to fix a broken piece of machinery, they are not so lucky.

"What makes it a challenge if something does break, mechanics have to work out there in those conditions," Madden said.

"Limit your exposure time. You can't spend a lot of time outside in conditions like that," Brown said. It's tough to work in."

Anchorage Regional landfill is open from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., and when the days get short, workers come to work in the dark and head home in the dark. And much of their day is spent working in the dark.

"The other challenge we get in the wintertime is about mid-December, the sun comes up at about 10 a.m. and goes down about 3 p.m.," he said. "It's headlight weather all day long."

The landfill uses portable lights at the working face to help in those conditions.

"After a while, you can tell that starts to wear on people," Brown said. "The limited daylight has an effect on everybody."

The flip side is summer when the days are long, leaving plenty of time for extra-curricular activities after work.

"The guys' attitude starts to pick up a little more," Brown said.

"What we do here is definitely affected seasonally and we're at the mercy of the weather. The guys have all done it a long time and they are very good at handling it," he said. "I think everybody here takes it in stride. They've done it a long time. Extra projects and things like that, usually we don't do anything as far as expansion until the summertime."

"You just go back to the bare minimum, just doing the basic operation and focus on that," Brown said.

Productivity also drops during the wintertime just because life moves slower when it's so cold. But maintenance and safety are important all year long, but take on an extra importance during the winter, Madden said.

"Stay on top of our equipment, make sure that no matter how cold it gets, you don't let your equipment maintenance slide just because it's cold. Because it's even worse to fix it than to maintain it," he said.

Safety becomes more of a challenge in the dark and cold as mobility is restricted by bulky clothing and visitors dropping off trash at the working face are not looking around as much, Madden said.

"Even if they're keeping track of what we're doing, we're keeping track of what they're doing, too," he said.

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