Mud, drainage issues at landfill entrance create major mess

By Kaylie Moore
kmoore@yourmvi.com
Rostraver Township officials are working with Westmoreland Sanitary Landfill representatives to address drainage issues on Tyrol Boulevard.
Commissioners met with landfill owner Rich Walton and state Department of Environmental Protection agents Tuesday at the site to discuss its entrance, where excessive mud occasionally builds up and hinders driving conditions.
“We just talked about the overall road conditions and making sure that we continue to be the best neighbor possible,” Walton said. “I outlined a lot of the long-term and short-term improvements to the infrastructure that we’re working on to make sure we limit any issues.”
Walton said his company is in the process of modifying existing site operations to limit the amount of mud the many trucks entering and exiting the site bring with them. A new route and turnaround at the top of the landfill should allow extra time for mud to “shake out” from between the trucks’ tires.
Additionally, Walton said, an on-site rock crusher will be consistently used to create enough gravel to maintain landfill paths, cutting down the amount of mud vehicles collect.
“If you have mud, it’s going to get stuck on trucks between the two wheels,” he said. “If we can limit that, it will just be a matter of cleaning tires regularly to remove that surface mud the trucks pick up from the road.”
Walton is also in the process of obtaining a DEP permit to upgrade the landfill’s existing wheel wash to a high-pressure washer that will spray vehicles’ undersides and make upkeep much easier.
“It’s very detailed, so they have engineers that review everything that I would like to adjust,” he said. “The design is being finalized, so we should have that submitted by the middle of January.”
Township Commissioner Devin DeRienzo said officials also discussed actions to be taken once temperatures drop below a certain threshold in winter months.

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