Our Landfill
Bavarian proudly owns and operates a 461-acre disposal facility in Walton, KY that provides an environmentally sustainable disposal site for the area’s commercial and residential waste haulers.
Our Landfill
Bavarian proudly owns and operates a 461-acre disposal facility in Walton, KY that provides an environmentally sustainable disposal site for the area’s commercial and residential waste haulers.
A landfill is a scientifically run waste containment operation. At Bavarian, we are driven to be good stewards of God’s creation, and our commitment to protecting the environment from waste contamination has made our operation a Kentucky leader in environmental protection.
Working with the Kentucky Division of Waste Management, Bavarian meets or exceeds all pertinent regulatory requirements.
How Bavarian protects the Environment
In order to process waste streams, a containment system has to be built in order to prevent any contaminates from coming in contact with the local environment.
After removing grass and topsoil, the disposal site (or cell) is shaped and contoured. Then 24 inches of compacted, crushed shale clay is placed over the entire cell area to provide a barrier between the undisturbed ground and the cell liner.
Here, a Bavarian employee uses a GPS-controlled bulldozer to spread the final layer of clay material.
After the clay is distributed over the cell floor to the proper thickness the clay is compacted to create a smooth floor for the plastic liner.
With the clay in place and approved by the Kentucky Division of Waste Management, the cell is ready for the liner.
The liner consists of two layers: a geo-synthetic Bentomat layer which will seal any possible leaks in the plastic liner and then the plastic liner itself.
Here you can see the plastic liner with a strip of seam removed for mandated stress testing. The geo-synthetic Bentomat layer is visible underneath.
Once the plastic liner is in place and all seams sealed, a tri-layer filter fabric is placed on top of the plastic liner. The filter fabric protects the plastic liner and directs water flow.
Here you can see the liner on the left and the filter fabric on the right.
The liner protects the ground and local waterways from being contaminated by liquid that passes through the waste, called leachate. The leachate works its way through the waste and runs along the filter fabric on top of the liner into collection pipes that divert the leachate into storage tanks. The leachate is either recycled through the landfill or transported to a certified wastewater treatment plant.
As waste decays it produces several gasses which Bavarian collects in order to prevent their release into the atmosphere. The gasses are primarily carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) which are collected through specially designed gas wells. The gas is suctioned to East Kentucky Power Cooperative’s on-site landfill gas to energy plant where the gas is burned to produce electricity. The plant currently is able to produce 4.4 Megawatts of electricity.
Any excess gas the landfill produces is burned at our stationary flare near the power plant. The flare’s large flame can often be seen from I-71 and is quite impressive at night.
