John Roosa, Administrator, Boone County Landfill and Recycling, May 20, 2026

I am joined today by the legendary John Rosa, landfill administrator, recycling coordinator on a sunny day. Good morning, your goat-ness. Oh, thank you very much. The cool weather for landfill operations and that's okay. We'll take it. Yep. You had a couple of sweltering days there in the last day. Yeah. How do you rain down there too, didn't you? Yeah. It settled some dust. That was, we've been fighting so. Yeah. A couple of weeks or it was not much. Yeah. It was. The upside and the downside of having a landfill, right, either it gets dry and dusty or it gets wet and muddy. Yeah. If we could just schedule light amounts of rain every couple of three days or something, but just a light just to knock some dust down. That's all I'm asking. Yeah. Not much. Outdoor activity, outdoor work. Hey, the last time, of course, you were departing here, you were going to the supervisors meeting, you had all the bids, everything in for the expansion, but we didn't get the public thing published on their agenda. All the other public notifications had gone out. So you have legitimate bids and everything. Yep. So everything's good. You're doing the formal procedures today. Yeah. Yep. And you know, I anticipate everything being just fine today. I'll go in and have the public hearing opened up as one of them like, oh shoot, no oversight. We didn't get that listed on the agenda and that's what we had to follow is make sure it's on the agenda. And so just delaying it a couple of weeks, everything's fine, you know, the contract, the bid, you know, I anticipate everything going forward, the resolution's being adopted and after the public hearing is open and then closed and then we go through that process and then sign with the bid agreement with the contractor and Leroy and Sons, yeah. They've worked there before. Haven't they done some work before you before? For us, not during my time anyway, I know our engineering firm though, they're familiar with them. So not at Boone County landfill, but at other landfills that they work with, they've dealt with Leroy and Sons on other projects and spoke very highly of them. So it's a smaller operation, more of a mom and pop type of operation, but I said it's also can be very beneficial too that they're going to focus on us and sometimes a bigger one, you know, have several jobs going on at once and maybe you're not the priority, but they'll focus on us. So, you know, if I get a glowing recommendation from our engineers, I put a lot of faith in that too that everything will be just fine. So don't want to jinx anything, knock on wood or something, but yeah, looking forward to this process being finalized today here in an hour and get things moving. I was going to say a little over two million. Pretty much the estimate or around the estimate, I can't even recall from the information two weeks ago. I think it was slightly under the estimate. Under, yep. Yeah, I think it was, and the engineers anticipated cost was 2.2, I believe. So we anticipated, you know, if I was going to be in that area, there was a lot of variables. They were, you know, the engineers were nervous about what to expect with the prices and you take fuel prices and when fuel prices are higher than what also goes up is plastic because of the petroleum that's used in that process. And we use a significant amount of plastic in our project. And also the sand, you know, they anticipated the sand, the drainage layer was supposed to be like a half million dollars just in sand to be brought in, you know, that doesn't just show up. So it's all that trucking cost too. There's a lot of money involved in that process as well. So yeah. So people understand. So like the sand, it's not just regular, you go sand. And I know there's a different kind of sand that gets used for like sand filters in the water plant and, you know, things like that. But I'm going with, kind of with what I know from like septic systems and stuff, it requires a different kind of sand quality. Certain type and then it has to meet a certain permeability to what we want the stuff to move. So it has to be clean, essentially, and but the right type and has to be certified a different or a special number given to it, I guess is and yeah, it's well, that's just the way it is. It has to be that kind of stuff. So there you go. All of this stuff is going to be sand can be so many options with that. But yeah. And then where can we get that, you know, and where can a contractor get that from? So there's yeah, lots of lots of stuff for them to deal with for sure. So one of the things, and you had kind of mentioned this last time, even if it is held up a little bit, that's okay, because we are moving forward with the forest main leachate forest main project, which needs to be done. You kind of want to get the basic part of that in first. I think is that how it's going to work or do you got to kind of stage between the two or? Yeah, they're both kind of going at the same time, which is odd, but also we thought kind of beneficial and doable. So the goal is going to be a kickoff meeting tomorrow actually for the forest main project. So we get an idea of when they're going to start get a timeline going because we have it designated like to be July that we want the contractors for the cell project to be able to have access. In order to make that happen, we got to get a lot of stuff out of the bottom. So there's two parts to the leachate forest main system, essentially, there's the bottom area getting it from the lagoon down on the bottom of the hill down bottom of the hole pumped all the way up to the shop area along Montana and then pumped from there all the way into town. So if we can get the portion of the pumping system down the bottom, get that done, get out of the way, then the cell project can follow accordingly and get their work done. So the weather permitting and all those things, you know, as we go back to that conversation just a moment ago of, you know, when it's it'd be high or nice and dry would be certainly helpful. Do what we can. That's right. I know every time I mentioned the last cell, you kind of cringed. Yeah. But again, it does and we've touched on this in the past for folks. It does offer you some other opportunities and we know engineering wise, there's new ideas that are coming out as far as, you know, can we spread it out a little more go a little higher? And I mean, so I do have some things that you can use to extend the life. It's not going to be indefinite bottom line folks. It's not going to be indefinite. Can do these things to make it last a little longer. We can go, you know, wider if we do a different expansion on our property still or if we go higher, if the DNR would allow that during using a certain type of closure cap, we could go higher, which would save it saves or give us more space and give us more life. But yeah, ultimately, it's going to run out sometime and all of it, you know, matters and when you throw stuff away as I've talked recently with other groups to say, you just always remember when you throw something away, it's going to go to a landfill and it's going to stay there forever. And that's my stance on that. That people believe it's going to go away. Well, if it doesn't have air and oxygen, it doesn't bio degrade stuff does not. And try, try imagine I did this where a project one time with the outdoor classrooms to had a banana peel, you know, and you peel a banana and you eat it. You leave that banana peel sitting out in the air for an hour, you're going to see some changes to it. Sure. Take the banana peel instead and stick it in a Ziploc plastic bag and shut it off and seal off and see the differences between those two. So have two bananas, take the peels off one of them and leave it open and put one side of sealed container and see what the differences are. And that's on a banana peel that would bio degrade pretty easily. And then imagine what else, you know, you're throwing away plastic bags, containers, cardboard, whatever it is. It's just not going to go away. I know you guys have gone back into occasionally get into some of the older parts of the landfill and you get down there a ways and you got newspapers you could read. Yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah. It was from the 70s. Yeah. They did that on the previous cell construction, got in an old area and you could see it from 19. I think it was 1979. Yeah. So you're talking 40, 50 years and you can still read the print on a newspaper. I think that's pretty good evidence that things aren't going away when they're buried. If we fill up the space, that's what we're doing. All right. Let's talk a couple other things because I know we got, first of all, we're coming to the end of yard waste or our allocated free yard waste. Basically. Uncharged. What do we got here? We got... Next week. Yep. 28th, 29th, 30th, the last. Yep. So this week, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and next week, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and then that'll be it for the free time until October. Yep. So we have that going on, folks. Yep. If you need it, use it. How's the traffic been? Good. You know, some days it's like, wow, I think it was last Friday or something. It was really slow. There's not only 20 vehicles or something over the course of the day, which was really low. And then other times it's, you know, it's nonstop. So yeah, I think... That's if we get in this thing about get the yard clean. Yeah. Do it now. Or graduations to get everything cleaned up and maybe it's going to calm down a little bit here shortly. And we do have, with June coming up, we have the 6th. Household Hazardous Waste. Yep. And then, and that's at DMACC. So if you're unfamiliar with the June collection date that we've done for a lot of years now. On the north side of DMACC, on the parking lot, there's an area where you can bring your yard, bring your household hazardous waste in and have it dropped off. So instead of having to come out to the landfill that day, we come into town. And then there's another one following that. This one's kind of newer development. But on June 8th, we reached out, Ogden reached out and said, can we ever do one of those? And I worked with Metro Waste Authority. They were able to put it together for you. They were. They were like, when? Because I think he's got a busy, busy, really busy week that week, I guess. Because they have to go collect. But then when they, after they collect that, take it back and then they have to sort and process everything on their end. So it's not just a couple hours. But they were able to squeeze in Ogden. So they agreed to come up from five to seven on June 8th. And that's a citywide cleanup. Yeah, they do a two-day cleanup. Yeah, 8th and the 10th, I believe, near their city park. And now that's not to say, I mean, that's for the citywide cleanup, for their garbage and their community cleanup process. The household hazardous waste will be tied in, but nearby and kind of separate yet. It's not just for Ogden. It's not just for the city of Ogden, for this collection, for the household hazardous waste. That's for your service area. Yeah, it is. It's for anybody that's in our, if instead of coming out to the landfill to drop off the household hazardous waste, you could attend that event as well. Now keep those two things separate. You know, if you're in town and you're doing a cleanup and getting rid of some stuff that's in your yard that you wanted to get rid of, that's part of their cleanup process. And that's just the city. And if you're doing the household hazardous waste, that could be anybody in their service area. That was kind of like, well, when the Boone was doing their citywide cleanup. Yeah. Yeah. Same idea. Yeah. It's not restrictive to that, but it just has to be in our service area. So again, service area at Green County included in your service area. Yep, sure. Not Jefferson. Not Jefferson. Not Jefferson. Okay. But again, residents can come over and use it. Sure. Yeah. That's easy enough to do. Otherwise they got to make that trip all the way to the landfill. Yeah. And it's talking to some of the communities in Green County because, you know, given some recycling information and they were asking about the hazardous waste and those things, they're like, how can we ever get one of those? And I mean, that's a long way to go. But also, you know, Jefferson, even though they're not in our service area, they use Metro Waste Authority for their hazardous waste disposal. So the idea was, could we tie in with that and help staff it out there, even though they're not for the garbage disposal in our service area, they're still using the same company that collects all the hazardous waste. So it really doesn't matter necessarily, but it'd just be some record keeping about where they're from and whose service area it is. But at least it would be closer instead of having it for those folks to instead of having to come all the way to do it for the collection. So it might be something to do with the work out. Work in progress. Yeah. Bring it all together. Work together on it and make it happen for the communities. Sure. We hit July. Obviously, the 4th, you're not going to be doing yours at the landfill. No, we're not. Which would be, that's the first Saturday, folks, and so would you move it to the 11th or just skip it? Oh, we'll have to look at that. Yeah, I think we've delayed it to the next, we went to the following, I think, is what we've done in the past. Yeah, to the 11th. Yeah. And then again, you'll still do one the beginning of August, another one the beginning of September. And then October, we go down south to Madrid, on the 3rd, October 3rd. Get it wrapped up. Yep. And we do one more in November and then we're done for the season. And again, that's just for the household hazard this way. Do want to, I did want to ask you more about batteries because I just took some here. I had to tape up and stuff like that and I think because we don't have a lot of them here, I'll probably have to put them in my little collection of regular alkaline batteries at home in the box. One of these days, I'm actually going to bring those to you. Excellent. Get them taken care of. Bring them a couple of weeks right here on a Wednesday, well, you can just drop them out. I can take them for me then. Yeah, I can pick those up. I've got some old rechargeables too that I have to set up. And that kind of stuff, you know, we can transport, which is part of the collection of universal waste, those types of things we could actually collect on our own, you know, we do those household hazardous waste collection events. That's for drop off because you're dropping off chemicals and different things and those have to be transported under certain regulations and guidelines by the DOT, so we can't just transport them doing it on our own. But batteries are not an issue to move them around and collect. So yeah, something else to think about with our hazardous waste. And I know, again, now you've got your battery safe storage facility out there. I know you've been looking at potentially some drop off things for batteries. Yeah. Still just looking right now, no final decisions. Not going yet, but I think the plan that we're going to be pushing for is to take some of those collection boxes, call to recycle is the old company name. They've changed their name since then, we can collect them in a box and then just mail them in directly and look at maybe collection points around town to where people could drop those off and whoever can gather them and then ship them off directly might be the easiest way instead of having to transport them out to us and then wait and that kind of stuff. So looking at other types to implement easier and then look at something a little more elaborate in the future. So yeah, that's the plan going forward anyway. And for folks that don't know, yes, he is part of the Raghbrih committee. I don't know how much you've been attending because he's been down, not quite as mobile as a fast, but it is one of the things that you're handling. You're on that end of it. Everything that they get leave is going to get dumped and it's going to end up in the landfill folks. So we've got some things that will be coming up there right now. You don't really need volunteers to help with this. You just need people to pay attention to what they're throwing. Yeah, well, we will need volunteers and I know Andy Bartlett's also kind of heading up the volunteer organization for it, getting names and people that are interested in helping. Ours would be more about during the event or prior to the event getting some of the containers ready. And then during the event, swapping out the bags, the bags of the liners of the tipper carts and stuff. So when they're full, you can swap them out. So a very glorious job of transferring garbage, picking up the bags and putting it into the bigger containers for disposal. So you do need a few people to do that. Still looking for companies that have roll off containers if they would like to donate to the cause. We could certainly use the garbage service. We could use a packer truck to go around and collect the tipper carts. I could just tip those right in and be done with them instead of having to swap everything out the entire time. And then also some roll off containers. We'd still need several locations when you look at all that's going on with the event. Besides the concert, the music event, you also have the vendor areas with all the food. You also have the campground and the campsites and all those have garbage accumulated. So plenty of locations throughout the town of where we would need some of those containers. So if you have access to those, any hollers that are interested in helping out and donated to the cause, get your sponsorship in, and we give you some proper recognition for that and support to the process. But you know, the... It's kind of building the team, isn't it? It is. Yeah. It's going to take a lot. There's a lot of stuff going on. There's a lot of people involved. A lot of people have committed on that board or the committees, committed a lot of time and efforts into making it as good of an event as it can be. So, yeah. Plenty. That's a do. Yep. Big things, folks. Again, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, yardways stays, landfill. Wrap up this week. Got next week and that's it for the spring version and then we'll see what happens after that. October, November. Of course, the household hazardous waste collection event that will be beginning of June. We'll talk about this when you come back next time. Sure. And then the special one that's going to be held over in Ogden on the 8th. Yeah. Nice addition. Otherwise, I hope Mother Nature treats you well at the landfill there because you guys got a lot of things that are going on. Yeah. We're up higher in the spot but, you know, it's muddy. If it rains, people will always surprise how muddy it is. Well, it's, you know, we don't have a dome. We don't have paved roads out there on the work face. Do what we can and get you in and out but be prepared for mud if it does rain. Okay. Well, just try not to go down to the face if I can help it. The only other thing obviously is, obviously, we didn't talk a lot about recycling but once again, folks, if you can, reduce, reuse, recycle. Please. Reuse. Reuse. Reuse. Eventually, it's going to be in the landfill but reuse as much as you can. That's right. Slow it down. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you.