Landfill workers feeling impact of Kilgore fire

TYLER – In the midst of the usual uptick in recycling and waste during the holidays, their workload is only increasing, because everything’s now going to the landfill together. Every day, dozens of trucks sit in line at the Greenwood Farms Landfill in Tyler waiting to dump their trash. East Texas landfill and sanitation workers are still feeling the impact of a major recycling center catching fire in Kilgore six months ago and halting services for many local cities.

“About 300 trucks come through here every day and unload about a thousand tons per day,” said manager of municipal services at Greenwood Farms Landfill, Gene Keenon. Towards the end of the year, Keenon said that number doubles.

It’s not just the holiday rush they’re facing. Since River’s Recycling Center shut down in Kilgore, recyclables are also coming to the landfill. “It’s about 300 tons a week that we used to be diverting out of the landfill. It’s now coming back into the landfill,” Keenon explained. That’s an extra 300 tons per week his workers have to deal with. “We just try to work a little faster to try to get it up,” Keenon said.

Over in Longview, sanitation and compost manager Kim Wallace said they are already dropping off more at the Pine Hill Landfill, and they’re expecting it to increase by about a quarter more during the holidays. Picking up trash and recyclables is affecting them in other ways, as well. “What it does for us is it cut down on the amount of overtime that we were paying,” Wallace explained.
Rather than sending a trash truck and a recycling truck, they are now only sending one truck to pick it all up. “So instead of now staying out sometimes to about 6:00 or 7:00 p.m. at night, the guys and the ladies and gentlemen are getting out a lot earlier,” said Wallace. “And so we are, as far as overtime, saving on that end for sure.”

Keenan, on the other hand, said his employees at the landfill are working more. “It’s very hard on our workers, but they do it somehow,” said Keenan.

All of these factors are leading up to their busiest time of the year. Despite the workload increasing, Keenan assured our news partner, KETK, that the landfill isn’t at risk of running out of room. “This landfill has 400 years. There’s not going to be a crisis anytime soon of landfill space,” Keenan explained. Both Keenan and Wallace fear the real impact will instead come later.

“It’s been a real challenge trying to educate and get people to recycle properly, and I don’t want that to go away just because we’ve had a one year lapse in recycling, and I’m afraid that’s going to happen,” Keenan said. The best advice is to not lose old habits. Residents should keep doing what they have always been doing with their trash.

Both Keenan and Wallace said they were told River’s Recycling should be back up and running by June of next year.