New Jersey County Fights Landfill Odors Using Fragrant Spray Trucks 104
Not to be outdone by the Chinese and their deodorant guns, Middlesex County, New Jersey has unveiled their secret weapon against landfill stink, a perfume spraying truck. The flatbed truck equipped with special nozzles now drives around the 200-plus acre landfill spraying hundreds of gallons of a soapy, slightly citrus-scented liquid. From the article: "'It has a pleasant, showery smell,' said Richard Fitamant, executive director of the Middlesex County Utilities Authority, which runs the landfill. 'It's not offensive and it's not overpowering. It's a light scent.' Faced with a competing mandate to handle the loads of trash while curbing the stench, officials have turned to the roving, over-sized air freshener to control the smells wafting from the 200-plus acre landfill."
Re:Smells fresh, but probably worse than trash (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Smells fresh, but probably worse than trash (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd like to invite you to drive the Tricity Beltway near Szadólki. If you have your windows closed, a well-hermetic car, an air refresher and have a cold, you may survive. That smell is so rancid that any concerns for the environment will go away the moment you take a whiff.
Of course, they could have placed that landfill away from housing and from the road that greets almost every visitor to Gdansk, sparing them such a grand welcome.
OT: screw you /. for that great Unicode support.
New York's Problem Becomes New Jersey's? (Score:4, Interesting)
NYC handles little of its trash in the city, a minority of it in New York state, and otherwise sends it all into New Jersey, on barges and rail cars to Tennessee and Virginia, etc. Pretty much every sanitation policy of NYC constitutes a fiscal and environmental disaster. New Jersey may be wasteful and rude as well, for all I know, but I'm betting the majority of the extra trash comes from New York. This problem just might disappear if New York were to construct a few of the (profoundly environmentally friendly and electricity producing) new models of incinerator or build landfills in their own damn state. I'm not from any state discussed in my rant, by the way; I just think New York is an all-consuming, wasteful jerk of a city.
Re:Smells fresh, but probably worse than trash (Score:3, Interesting)
Someone is sure to object on those grounds...
But seriously, where does landfill stink come from, and why do they all small pretty much the same?
Land fills smell nothing like a dumpster full of garbage. So you can't blame it only on the garbage content.
Wouldn't it be better to find the the problem and fix that instead of covering it up?
One wonders if the stink is a necessary outcome of the landfill process or just a byproduct that is not well understood. With sealed landfills, some states mandate gas extraction as part of the sealing process. There are something like 425 Land Fill Gas To Energy [treehugger.com] (yeah, I know, TreeHugger, cut me some slack ok?) projects in the US accounting for 1,180 megawatts of power.
Not a great deal, but it would seem a better solution than spraying it and hoping no one will notice the stink.
lol (Score:3, Interesting)
Easier (Score:2, Interesting)
Dose the it with liquid mushroom culture, and next year the pile will not only smell better, it will be smaller. Everybody wins.
WTF, the Navy fliss planes at night? (Score:4, Interesting)
Rotting food is not pollution. The problem isn't the smell, the problem is the number of people moving in closer and closer to the landfill. Wow! this house is only $150k! Whats that smell?!? We should complain!! Darn landfills making me not want to live in my cheap house that's right by the landfill!!!
I've seen similar issues in California. Homes gets nearer and nearer to Air Force and Navy bases and then the new residents complain about planes flying around at 3am. The Air Force and Navy bases were explicitly acknowledged in their signed disclosures but people have literally been quoted in the newspapers saying things like: I knew about the base but I never imagined they would be flying around in the middle of the night.
This is what ahppens (Score:3, Interesting)
When there are services people expect to maintain civilization, but bitch whenever they are asked to pay for it.
But no, people don't want to pay for it. That want to 'cut fat' and lower taxes and get more service.