Trash into Cash

At a closed landfill in Riverhead NY, on Eastern Long Island, town engineer Ken Testa gives a tour. For 35 years, this is where Riverhead?s 10,000 residents buried their garbage. Now it?s a muddy valley scattered with giant heaps of trash and sand. (:0x)

SOT [ambi of bumpy car ride] You know what, I?m gonna go all the way up. It?s a good vista. What you?re looking at for your listeners is about 35 acres of a hole in the ground. (:13)

NAR 2 Testa climbs an 80 foot high mound of sand that was mined from the stadium-sized hole below. To the south is the actual landfill where the sand was used as daily cover to keep out rats, sea gulls, and other vermin. For landfills around the country, sand is a huge expense. Riverhead?s landfill has 2 hundred thousand dollars worth of sand mixed in with the trash. The town decided to recoup some of that expense by digging up the garbage and s...
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INTRO: Since 1993 more than 6000 landfills in the US were forced to shutdown because of tighter environmental regulations. But to close a landfill the operators have to make sure no contaminates from decomposing garbage can leak into the groundwater. This can be an expensive project involving highly engineered covers and drainage systems. So the town of Riverhead, New York wanted to try another solution: digging up the town dump and selling what?s underneath.. It?s an unusual process called reclamation that turns trash into cash.

IN: At a closed landfill

OUT: underground for years to come