Until Sept. 30, Calvert County residents can leave their tree debris on the side of the road to be picked up or take it to the county’s two landfills at no charge, and there are plenty of residents and businesses taking advantage of that offer.
Thousands of tons of wood have come through the landfill since Hurricane Irene left trees on residents’ lawns during the last weekend of August, and the county is working to make sure none of that wood goes to waste.
Donnie McCready, chief of the county’s Highway Maintenance Division, said county employees have been working 12-hour days since the storm stopped to collect the debris residents are leaving for them. Crews are driving around the county’s 1,749 roads looking for the piles of wood to be picked up.
“We’ve been going road to road,” McCready said. “We have six crews, with four to five people on each crew.”
In addition to that, there are contractors who have been hired by the county to help out, and those companies often have larger equipment than the county’s trucks and can pick up larger amounts of debris. McCready said some of the companies have trucks that use a long arm with a claw at the end to pick up the trees and put them in their trucks, which often hold as much as 100 yards of waste.
Yards, specifically cubic yards, are used to measure debris, as well as weight in tons. The average county dump truck holds about 10 yards, McCready said.
On Friday, big trucks came rolling into the Appeal Landfill in Lusby every few minutes, with a few pickups sprinkled in. The big trucks were mostly contractors’ trucks with logos painted on the doors; the pickups were mostly residents who have cleaned up their own yards and chose to take the loads in themselves.
McCready said from Friday to Monday, the Appeal landfill had dealt with about 5,000 yards of debris.
“They are really staying busy,” McCready said of the highway maintenance crews who have been deployed in 12-hour shifts to gather and process all the debris.
There were two giant piles of tree debris visible at the landfill on Friday, and a third was less visible. County staff had to get special permission from the Maryland Department of the Environment to create those piles because they are not part of the landfill’s regular operations, but they had to be put somewhere, said Solid Waste Division Chief Mike Thomas. When the emergency is over and the landfill goes back to normal operations, Thomas said the areas will have to be seeded and mulched to allow grass to grow again.
Thomas said the trees are being turned into mulch that will be used by residents and contractors. Sitting atop an excavator in the middle of one of the giant piles of debris on Friday was Bill McKnew, a local contractor. Using the excavator a large machine with a boom claw McKnew was putting large amounts of debris into a grinder the size of a tractor trailer, which turned the trees into mulch. The mulch was transported via conveyor belt to the front of the grinder, where heavy equipment operators scooped it up and placed it into large piles.
Thomas said the contractors often take the mulch and process it further by making it smaller and sometimes treating it with a dye, then sell it. The mulch will be given away at no charge.
Bill Teter, the county’s recycling coordinator, said that by Friday, 38,000 cubic yards of debris had been taken in at both of the county’s landfills since the storm. That equates to 13,500 tons, he said. Calvert County spokesman Mark Volland said that when there is not an emergency, the landfills average 116 tons per month.
When asked what the busiest times of day have been, Teter quipped: “7 in the morning until 7 at night. We are steady all day long.”
Grinding of the debris is expected to cost the county about $250,000, not including employee overtime. Volland said that total will be added to the request for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Administration.
Through all of this, as the debris keeps coming in, all of the crews are still working to do their normal jobs.
“We’ve got a lot of stuff being pushed to a different time schedule,” McCready said. “We still have the work that goes on on a daily basis... it’s a balancing act.”
Teter said using both landfills is helping, and being able to designate the three areas just for trees is also useful.
“It’s a good traffic flow to be able to handle the normal trash and recycling and then all this debris for recycling.”
Calvert County residents can pick up free mulch at the Appeal Landfill for as long as it is available.
According to an email from county spokesman Mark Volland, the mulch is loose, not bagged, so pickup trucks or trailers are best for hauling. Residents should bring tools (a pitchfork and shovel) for loading; staff will load vehicles with machinery as time allows. Those interested may call the landfill to see if an operator is on-site to load the mulch. Keep in mind that the mulch is rather coarse and better suited for areas along tree lines or around trees.
Appeal Landfill
401 Sweetwater Road
Lusby, MD 20657
410-326-0210; toll-free 800-560-0210