Expanding the capacity of its site near Atlanta helped Waste Management split a single trash flow into two wastestreams.

By Steve Cribb

The new $3.4 million, four-sided, state-of-the art building at Waste Management Inc.’s Plant Atkinson facility also reduced the plant’s operational costs, while meeting the community’s ecological needs. Revamping the existing facility to handle the greater volume of waste met with several challenges, including residential pressures and permitting for landscaping and stormwater management.

In 2001, the southern group director of engineering for Waste Management, Ray Chewning, selected Golder Associates Inc. and Hornsby & Associates in Atlanta to incorporate his unique ideas in the design of a four-sided transfer building and onsite improvements at the existing Plant Atkinson facility. While the original facility stood on about five acres, the new construction would expand the site nearly eight more. While the initial design was completed that same year, project construction didn’t begin until late in 2004. Today, the building coexists with the original, three-sided building. Together they provide the facility capacity to handle about 2,500 tons a day with improved environmental performance.

Meeting the Need
Although the site was already partially developed, local government authorities required that Waste Management treat the site as undeveloped with regard to county landscaping requirements, which added expense to the project. Waste Management eventually planted 254 trees and numerous smaller shrubs to conform to the county’s point-evaluation system for landscaping requirements.

In addition to the extensive planting, Waste Management also agreed to include noise reduction in the landscaping plan. “We contoured the site with what would become low, grassy knolls to lessen noise. That also improved the appearance of the site,” said Chewning.

He also selected the Stormwater Management StormFilter from Stormwater360 to reduce contaminants in any runoff from the site. “We saw no other solution that met the state’s industrial stormwater permit requirements,” he said.

Although the Plant Atkinson facility location is zoned industrial, residential neighborhoods have been encroaching on the area for several years. To address the concerns of residents now in the vicinity, Waste Management held several meetings. The meetings helped local residents understand the community benefits of the facility expansion and how the landscaping and the new four-sided building improved visual appeal of the site. The company also explained how the stormwater collection and treatment system upgrades would improve the quality of the surface water discharged from the site.

A closed, four-sided building at Waste Management's Plant Atkinson facility also reduced the plant's operational costs and met the community's ecological concerns.

Splitting the Wastestream
The new building not only expanded the facility’s capacity, but also allowed Waste Management to split its MSW and C&D streams into two operations, each handled by a separate building at the site. The older building handles C&D, and the newer one MSW, allowing the company to reduce its operational costs by sending its debris streams to the appropriate landfill rather than sending everything to a more expensive lined landfill. “Breaking up our wastestreams not only reduced our costs, but now we can send construction debris to an unlined landfill, which further reduces our operational costs,” explained Chewning.

Stormwater Considerations
The two buildings provided the opportunity to divide water discharge into two streams—leachate and washwater that require municipal sewage treatment and stormwater that can be handled differently. As part of the new construction, Waste Management needed to meet Georgia’s requirements for handling runoff from 4.2 acres of impervious surface in the expansion area. “Before construction, our onsite water was cross-contaminating, making us treat any runoff from the facility as wastewater, which required that we treat it municipally,” said Chewning, who’s responsible for the stormwater management on the site. The new building includes many features designed specifically to prevent such cross-contamination.

“As part of our planning, we looked at using stormwater technology to reduce our operational costs,” said Lee Nelson, former district manager for Waste Management. “Plant Atkinson stormwater and wastewater went into a detention pond that then had to be treated in the municipal sewer—at a higher cost than stormwater treatment. Splitting the two offers us a significant operational savings.”

Plant Atkinson has the daily capacity for handling 2,500 tons of waste.

To meet the state permit and local code requirements for handling runoff from the Plant Atkinson site, Golder Associates designed a large stormwater detention pond. It was sized to attenuate peak flows and provide water quality treatment prior to final discharge. To enhance the water quality of site runoff, the Stormwater360 StormFilter was added to the stormwater treatment system. Stormwater360 designed a site-specific StormFilter solution to improve the stormwater quality by prefiltering upstream of the detention pond.

This custom stormwater collection system design removes any cross-contamination and ensures the separation of MSW wastewater and stormwater streams. The StormFilter pretreats runoff and decreases the volume of wastewater needing municipal treatment, which has reduced both treatment costs and lessened any water-related environmental concerns the county and nearby residents may have had. Since installing the system, Waste Management has met all its monthly monitoring benchmarks for industrial stormwater compliance.

Environmental Savings
Waste Management saw financial, ecological, and community goodwill improvements by erecting the new building.

A detention pond was built to handle wastewater and stormwater at Plant Atkinson.

The second building has allowed Waste Management to separate its MSW and C&D waste streams, and use its stormwater treatment to realize both a financial and ecological return on investment through the use of new technology.

The new building boosts the facility’s combined waste output from 1,200-1,500 tons per day to 2,500 tons per day, makes MSW collection quieter, presents a more visually appealing site, and contains odors better than the original three-sided building. The expansion also changed the older and less-sophisticated, three-sided building from handling all materials to just managing C&D collection and distribution. And the stormwater treatment system improved the local water quality.

Steve Cribb, P.E., is a senior project engineer for Golder Associates Inc. in Atlanta.

MSW - March/April 2006