VIDEO: Local Landfill Turns Garbage to Electricity

PONTOTOC, Miss. (WCBI)- When it’s time to take out the trash, the last you may see of it is the truck driving it away.

For some landfills in the area, that trash still has a purpose as an electricity source.

Many of us may have learned about renewable energy sources: wind, solar, water, but you wouldn’t think to put garbage in that mix.

However, for around 5 years, that is what Three Rivers has been doing with their garbage, and it benefits the surrounding area.

“This Three Rivers regional landfill is designed to be a benefit for this community. Everything we do at Three Rivers is to benefit the community,” said Solid Waste Manager, Doug Wiggins.

For the seven neighboring Mississippi counties in the Three Rivers region, all non-hazardous waste is required by law to come to Three Rivers.

By lining the base of the landfill, methane, or greenhouse, gases that come from the decomposing garbage is able to be turned into electricity.

“Your gas comes down, hits the dropout tank in our flare-skid system just south of here. We run both the engine and the flare together to make sure we destroy as much of the gas as we can that comes out of the landfill,” said Landfill Gas Operator, Jonathan McDonald.

From there the gas runs down a long pipe to a network of three filtration tanks.

“They actually run in series, so it goes in and out, in and out, in and out, three times, cleans the gas really well, goes to a blower and then runs to our engine,” continued McDonald.

Producing electricity to dispense to the community, benefiting both residents and the environment.

“We are able to now, with this electrical generation project, take a waste byproduct that would otherwise escape into the atmosphere and be bad for the atmosphere, and we pull it through a well-fill system into this engine and the engine produces 999 kW/hr,” said Wiggins.

It’s no small amount of power either.

“It’s enough electricity to power up to 1000 homes,” said Wiggins.

Three Rivers sells that electricty and that money is used to reduce the fees it charges to use the landfill.

“It’s $22 a ton, which is about half of the south eastern average and about a third of the national average,” said Wiggins.

Wiggins tells us their facility is designed to hold a second engine, something they hope becomes a reality in the future.

“We would be very interested in looking at an additional opportunity to bring on board,” said Wiggins.

There are federal regulations to rid landfills of methane gas, should levels get too high.

Three Rivers started this before those regulations were put into place because they saw the benefit it could serve to the people in the area, and that’s what makes this effort a special one.