John Roosa, Administrator, Boone County Landfill and Boone County Recycling, July 15, 2026

I am joined today by the legendary, legendary, John Rosa. Okay then. Landfill Administrator Recycling Coordinator who instead of having to deal with water at the landfill, it's the heat. Always something. Always something. Well hey, you have an outdoor facility so. Yeah. Yeah, we don't have a dome or a temperature controlled environment out there by any means. We're at the mercy of Iowa weather, whether it's a torrential rain or hot high heat humidity or. Blinding snow or winds or yeah, you name it. I mean, I guess we shouldn't be too surprised with Iowa after all. Hey, you know what? That's, well, that's part of working outdoors. Yes. We do have that. Again, heat, I'm guessing you got to make sure. They hydrated everybody, that sort of thing in the summertime. We think a lot about the equipment that we have now and the luxuries that with air conditioning and most of them now that thankfully, that we're not in the open air cabs that used to be in use out the landfill. It wasn't that long ago, I still had some of those. So we're very fortunate in that regard to be able to deal with that for our, you know, for our employees anyway, and it's always concerned with, you know, the haulers or people that come out there too, and then they're doing their unloading and, you know, during that time. So yeah, always something. Didn't you have the, yeah, the fire department came and visited you a while ago? Yes. Well, your staff were the ones that really recognized the fire and did, did a lot even before the fire department got there. Yeah. And certainly contained it. Yes, saw that a couple of guys went out to the fill to get it, get ready for the day and about 715 and got a call that, Hey, we need some more fire extinguishers down here. We got a fire. And after getting down there with some more fire extinguishers, realize that that's not going to do it. We needed some more assistance and we were going to get some water on it and try to douse it some more because it was rather large. I mean, not, not, not like it could have been, you know, a couple of vehicle size worth. I guess if you'd park them out there, yeah, enough and, you know, it was, it was on, it was flaming. There was a lot of smoke around it too. And, but yeah, the, fortunately the fire department is available. We really needed some water at the time. We have a vacuum pump truck that we use for other purposes. And of course that thing didn't start at that moment of for whatever reason, it just, yeah, it's pretty reliable otherwise, but it chose not to help us out that day. And so thankful that the fire department was readily available and come out and help us take care of it. We did our portion of it, you know, trying to stir it up a little bit to get to the stuff that maybe was on fire, but yeah, instead of just letting it smolder. So got a good douse and they were, you know, comfortable with saying, okay, you should be good now. So thanked them for their help and they, our staff monitored for a few hours after that. But it was so weird how that just ignited because we hadn't, we discussed it and it's like, we hadn't put fresh garbage in that area for a week, at least prior, a week to 10 days prior that started. And they hadn't even tracked across that for I think three days, you know, it was, and suddenly at that point that fire decided to start up and best guess would be batteries. Yeah. What causes it? Yeah, exactly. We're not digging everything up and looking. But some people say, why don't you just push more dirt over it? Yeah. Well, because it does keep, it keeps burning under. Yes. Yeah. It's more important to expose it and dousing, put it out, extinguish it instead of just covering it up. I mean, yes, covering fires is normally really good, but in our situation, there's a lot of things that can be on fire, things, other things, other things that could ignite under the ground also. And you get into methane. I mean, there's a whole different conversation. Look at the methane there. Would that have been like a boom? Yeah. It would have been a significant different story, I guess. So yes, we want to extinguish it so it doesn't keep going and try to find other things to light. And so didn't have to excavate very much or guys pushed a pile out of it and to, you know, spread out a little bit and got the, got water doused on it and anyway, we went. So it was just one of those things that I wanted to bring up mostly because a lot of people are just, well, I could have just pushed dirt up. Yeah. Dirt'll fix it. Quite the idea because then all it does is, yeah, it keeps, it's still there. Yep. There's always been talk about landfills that have had fires and that they underground, they're still going. And, you know, that's a frightening thought that how, where does it go and how does it keep going and where does it ever surface and that you get in veins of pockets of gas and who knows where it might be, you know, a hundred yards, 200 yards, a mile. I don't know. It's underground. How do you know where that is? So, you know, just best to find the cause and let's really get it instead of hoping for the best. And they use their thermal camera out there too, which we've since purchased a variation of that to do that same thing so we can check hot areas or check for hot areas and surfaces at the fill. So if it was easy, well, there is no easy answer when you're talking about a landfill. It's in and again, people need to remember to everything is done. You have guidelines in place that you have to follow the DNR and EPA. Yeah. They say, you know, you got to cover, you got to have so much, you know, you can't do, can't just leave it set open overnight. You know, things like that. So there's there's a lot of a lot of regulations tied to it. There sure is. And, you know, you think about just your household garbage. We call it MSW municipal solid waste. Your household trash, you know, your kitchen trash, your stuff from your home. You know, that's one small element of what we take. And then you have all the other oddities and then you get into special waste authorizations that here's the material that this manufacturing company, industrial plant, whatever you want to call it has and they need to get rid of it. Well, can you accept it? Well, I don't know. And frankly, we need more information if we can accept whatever it might be. So then we go since it doesn't meet the criteria of municipal solid waste or C and D construction demolition waste, typical stuff, then a different process to get testing done, see what it's made of, see what kind of potential hazardous stuff is in there. So, you know, we try to take what we can, but there's some stuff that we just say, no, that's going to have to go to a different location. Maybe another landfill would accept it. Maybe it has to be disposed of and treated differently by a different company, that type of thing. But, you know, ultimately, we want to provide the service to our service area and take as much as we can. Kind of like the household hazardous waste program in and of itself is when people bring out those oddities, can you, here's this, well, I don't know. I'm not familiar with that one. Every now and then we get one that stumps us and but then we can ask, you know, the, our Metro Waste Authority friends, can we accept this? And we often, you know, go with the intent to say, we'll take everything we can. And if we don't, if we can't accept it, we want to be able to give you an answer of where you can take it because otherwise it doesn't do much good. It's going to sit in someone's house, you know, in that situation or just like that other SWA material, you know, sit in some plant or some manufacturing place that and what's it doing there? Well, potentially harmful. So it needs to go somewhere. So we've tried to get the answer to just say, no, we don't want to give you just a no. We want to say, no, we can't. But here's what I'll find out more information so we can continue the process for you to get it properly handled and disposed of. So yeah, just some of the challenges, you know, we try to get that service as much as we can and get the correct answers in place and help people as much as possible. We work at it. Yep. If it was easy, we wouldn't have to call somebody to ask all those questions. That's right. Yep. And, you know, the more that we experience at the landfill, the more we can have that experience, the more we know and more knowledge that we gain on giving the answers immediately, which is, you know, that's our society. We want answers right now to those things. Right away. And well, I saw it online somewhere, you know, or something like that. Yeah. Right. Or I heard. Or yeah. You've got to have somebody where you get that final authority. That decision is made. So let's talk a little bit about the recycling. And again, because this is our big push and again, all our recycling folks is voluntary. And again, I keep asking you every once in a while. So how are we seeing our numbers looking better? Things like that. And again, we always have some people that just think that something should be recyclable, but it's not. And I know it's a challenge, but bottom line is we're trying to get more people involved with it. Yeah, we sure are. Any chance you can get to make it more convenient is going to be helpful, you know, and if you have the opportunity to do that in town anyway through curbside service, curbside recycling collection, I would, you know, encourage that because that would be the most convenient way for you to handle it. The other one that is certainly a convenient spot and heavily used, as I understand it too, and by the dumpsters that we keep running out of there at the drop off area, 11th and division behind co-transfer, you know, the amount of times that's used is quite alarming. It just seems to perpetuate their hauling boxes out of there that our recycling guys are hauling one of those dumpsters out of there throughout the week. It's almost daily, it seems like, and on the weekends, we can't make it through the weekend. And it was interesting, I thought, because my, my daughter has used it a few times for her work to drop off some boxes and stuff, which is fine. But she was saying, every time I go up there, there's there's always somebody else up there at the exact same time, you know, that place is really busy. There's usually, you know, there's always one person, if not more, and I'm like, yep, I'm not surprised. And some people are, you know, dropping off things. Others are, you know, looking for cans to pull up for redemption. Sure. It's fine. You know, that's a, that's a stream. But yeah, it's certainly busy. I mean, just as soon as they can do that, you can do that. Right. Yep. Please, feel free. Absolutely. But, and mostly I've seen occasionally some Styrofoam, but just saying, it happens. Always. But a lot of them are doing a pretty good job of folding the boxes down anyway. Yeah. So you are getting actually a pretty good stream of cardboard out of there. Yeah. Yeah, we are. Yeah. And that which, by the way, is one of those things where we do have a destination for that. Yeah. Yep. And kind of like its own little market and essentially going to the same place. But if we can separate it, then we can actually recoup some of the funds to offset costs and expenses that, oh, that make recycling a challenge, if you will. Because it is, it is expensive. And if we can divert some of that cardboard and collect it separately with our business recycling truck to gather and sell separately, then we can not make money, but spend less. That's, that's probably, yeah, that's the easiest way. A cost avoidance is where we try to, we want to be really fancy. Yeah. Avoid that additional cost. Because it is, it is there. And it is something that needs to be done. And rather than having us go through the cost, at least save us a few bucks. Yes. Well, we'll keep working. Let's talk a little bit about, I know, you know, it's all, all voluntary. Obviously, most people are following along with the story about what was going on in Ames, which kind of threw you onto the news there a little while ago. Yes. But again, about the life of landfills and, and yeah, we don't want people to panic and say, Oh, it's like next week. No, it's, there are several years, but we're making progress on some of the things that we need to do to extend the life as much as possible. And engineers come up with new things all the time. I guess they're not just sitting there thinking about stuff. They're coming up with ideas. So, but right now force main project going forward. Again, this is to, and people go, well, why do we need this? And again, it's to get the leachate right now. Do you guys pump it out and haul it to the city wastewater plant? Yeah. A couple of times a week. Oh, at least. Yeah. And right now it's, we're trying to get these projects going with our next cell construction and then, you know, the force main project also, but specifically for the construction project that goes on nearby, we need to have additional storage in our lagoon for the leachate. And we need to get our lagoon pulled down, you know, the volume, the levels dropped a bunch and we can't pump it yet. So we're still, and we're scrambling or short staffed and, you know, just all these issues. And so we're contracting it out, having someone haul for us to save time. And then we're actually hauling to Des Moines temporarily to got a permission from their water treatment source so they can take tankers of leachate down to this. We did this a few years ago as well, just in a certain situation to where we need to get, we need to get the level dropped and we need this done quicker. We can do it quicker. Yeah. We have 6,000 gallons at a time down there in each tanker, you know, a couple times a day they're going, still hauling uptown here to our own wastewater treatment plant. So trying to get the level knocked down, but it's one of them. That's what would continue if we didn't have the force main for the, for the immediate, you know, future and then longer term, because we're able to, once this force main gets functioning, then we can start pumping leachate immediately into town and to leach it into the collection, the sewer system for the city and then ultimately to the water treatment plant. But then beyond the life of the landfill, and if you've heard the, the spiel about it, you know, of how much time we have left, continuing what we're doing would be done in 13 years. But you know, if we're able to extend with, by removing the aims and story, county waste at our fill, then we can get to 35 years and using that system for the that long plus beyond that life of the landfill, we still have to have that leachate being pumped into town during the closure time and post closure time of the landfill for another 20 to 30 years. So being able to use that now and then we'll be able to get 50 years of life out of it or more. So however long we can hang on to survive and still provide our service, but take as much as little waste, I should say, take as much waste as possible, but I'd provide the service. One of the things and again, obviously, one of the big expenses coming up in this next fiscal year for you is that a new, a new compact, which they just, you don't buy them off the floor, you know, you don't have a dealer that just hasn't sitting there. So, but so getting a bigger one, I mean, heavier. And I know one of the things that your people have talked about is doing narrower, you know, kind of spreading it out. So it's not quite as deep. So you got a smaller area that you're really compacting, getting a maximum, maximum compaction, I guess is way better way. And that fine line between how wide to go with it, because spreading it out wider and then you're compacting less height of the garbage would compact better, but then also you're spreading that spreading it out. And then we still have to cover that at the end of the day. So getting it back to a reasonable working face, open air or open face for the garbage. That's that fine balance between science and we want to get goodness, you do math. I can figure it out. But again, that's so that's one of the things now in one thing on the engineering side that I know, because we've touched a little bit on this previously, but potentially at some point, we could look at maybe going higher on our existing site. But again, this would be all engineered. I mean, you got to do that. You got to be able to present something to the DNR to say, we can extend our life, you know, another 10, 15 years if we do this. And of course, you'd have to have permission. Yep, that's that's it. Yeah. Yeah. And it was it was really discussed last year with DNR a little bit more, it was became I think became more of an issue because we I sauce will board committees did a feasibility study or I guess a research about what capacity levels are it at landfills state did draw a lot of attention. Yeah. And it's kind of alarming when you look at those bigger ones, especially that are running the space issues, but also any of them that look at, well, we're only going to be able to survive for another, you know, however many years, and everyone had their own data. And most of it was shared. And so that's when the topic kind of came up. And I had discussions with the DNR about going higher so that it requires a different type of cover material. So typically, landfills are made with a soil clay liner, and then you have a plastic liner on top. And then when you get to the top to close it, then you have to do reverse it and do use the same material. So you have the plastic liner soil on top, and then and cover. So whatever you put on the bottom is what you're supposed to do on the top. And then this would be more of a turf material instead. And with that, they're saying they could go from a four to one slope to a two to one slope, so much steeper. But with that is operational challenges as well. So you just because you could go that high, can you, you know, are you actually able to go that high, and maintain it and, you know, deal with any erosion? And if how far of a slope would it be? And you look at our landfill, it's tall enough as you look at it from the top area, the road coming in, when you get down the very, very bottom and start looking up to the top, you know, it's like 900 feet or something. You got a ways there, yeah. It would be quite a slope, if you will. So having breaks in that, and then how can you maintain it? How can you get to the top and, you know, service it and maintain the cover, you know, just a lot of things to consider, just because you could go that high, should you go that high, but certainly figures to say, wow, you know, you could actually go from, you know, a 35 years of life to 65 years, and it would add that much to it. That's pretty tempting and to be able to extend it that much longer. But can you do it? And that's the one thing, yeah. Down the road, we will find out what they do, because somebody will come up with an idea and will science the heck out of it, you know, is what we'll do. Things coming up, okay, we did have, you had a delayed on the household hazardous waste because of the Fourth of July holiday. So you did it on the 11th. Next one coming up, we're going to be on the first. We'll have, no, we won't visit before then. So August 1st, we'll be the next one. Yeah. And that's the local one that we will do at the landfill. So if you look a little longer term, you got the August 1st at the landfill on our Saturday hours, bring out your household hazardous waste to our drop off area. And then we threw another one in there. It's not pertaining to Boone per se, but August 15th, we are going to collaborate with the city of Jefferson. Oh, okay. So Jefferson is not our service area for garbage and for recycling, and they do their own thing. They go to Metro Park West. But the household hazardous waste that's developed, it comes from that city, also goes to Metro Waste Authority in Des Moines. Part of the cleanup. That's who we use too. So let's talk, could we join your efforts and not saying you just do it, we will send staff to assist with that on the 15th. But it's more of an outreach to our service area in Green County. Because much of the balance of Green County comes here. Yeah, right. Everything in Green County, except for Jefferson, comes to Boone County Landfill. And we provide the trash, the landfill service, recycling services. But the outreach to be able to collect household hazardous waste is like, we don't really get over there. And some of them are pretty good distance away, drive over to Sheridan sometime, or Scranton. It's a time. So Jefferson said, yeah, you could do that. Let's join together. So which was so kind of them to allow that. I talked to Metro and they're like, Yep, that's fine. So we'll jointly do that. And then we can help all of Jefferson. I mean, when their folks are coming into will and then hopefully we'll get a huge turnout. You know, if you're able to catch the show and hear and hear this about about it going on, if you're over in the Green County area, not in Jefferson, well, all the Green County then come come on the 15th because everything. But you utilize the program. And then because otherwise you're bringing it all the way over to the landfill. And it's, I know it's a it's a jaunt. It's a bit of a journey to bring it over. So we're coming to you. So, you know, meet us part way, get over to Jefferson and drop yourself off 9 to 11 on the 15th. Okay. Yeah. It's a new one. So we'll pass it along or hopefully they're passing it along over in Green County. So I contacted the city people anyway and said, Hey, here's an opportunity. Please share. And again, you're all going to Metro ways. So yeah, same location. So let's let's join up. Let's do it together. So besides they like it, it makes it, I mean, you know, the way it turned out for the event in Ogden, yeah, they, I think they were pretty pleased overall, yeah, with the volume and stuff that you were able to get. So and hopefully enough to let's keep doing that too. So, all right. Again, those just some of the things that'll be coming up. Otherwise, boy, we don't, you know, it's just straight ahead forward. Okay. Now, you do have some rag brie riders that are coming through but you're you're right. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. You're part of the waste collection effort here too. Do we have people that are helping out with that? What's happening? Some we could sure use some more. I know I talked to Andy Bartlett just a little bit ago. We're doing some cleaning of trash cans out the landfill. I unfortunately had to step away. But they were starting to do some of those and Andy's been in charge of the voluntary recruitment and it looks like things are going well. Two short falls are sanitation is the collection of it. So, you know, I think we have enough containers that we're in good shape still looking for some garbage haulers to donate roll off boxes and I have a backup plan if needed. But beyond that, you know, during the event, there's going to be a huge influx of waste coming in garbage, especially you go down to the vendor area with all the food service and the beer tents and everything that's going on South Story Street. We have a lot of our recycling carts we're going to use and for garbage purposes, put liners in them, but I really need people to help with that. It's not glamorous, but it would be pulling the bags out when they're, you know, full, don't wait, they're completely full because they'll be really heavy, but and then put in a fresh liner to keep the process going. So, you know, the ability to stay ahead of that as much as possible will be important because we'll have a lot of carts out there, but, you know, they're full. People will often just try to, you know, is it Jenga or what is the game? We try to position it on there. Let's just get stacked on there like a stack of cards or something and then, you know, the card for it. Anyway, then it falls down and then, you know, then we have issues. So, staying ahead of it and so just be during that really that time when the food vendors are going. So, really in the afternoon and then early evening be the huge part of it and forget everything changed, then probably make it to the end of the night with the concert going on, you know, without much, hopefully not much involvement, but then after that will be, you know, we've got to get it to the landfill, of course, after that. Clean everything up, pick up a day after as they leave town and then get that all loaded. So, we'll be getting all those containers in place on Monday afternoon and to avoid the issues and we'll have everything set up, get everything set out on the roads out there where the event's going and then come Wednesday, let's get everybody out of town and then we'll be able to come in and get the boxes and everything unloaded and away we go. I was going to say about the time you go pick them up at the fair, you just drop them off. Swing by. Just drop them off. Well, you know, you go through the cleaning process and clean them up. Yeah, it's going to be a little busy. It will. But if you'd like to volunteer, contact and go online to visit Boone County, go to their Rag Brack page. Yeah, they've got a volunteer form there. If you'd like to help out with this, please, please step up and help. That'd be great. Yes. Thanks so much for joining us and getting us up to date on what's going on. Visit with you again next time. Thank you.