Call it trash or call it garbage… but every year approximately 200,000 tons of solid waste from the city of Las Cruces and Doña Ana County is landfilled at Corralitos Regional Landfill. Most of it comes through the South Central Solid Waste Authority (SCSWA) Transfer Station Station at 2865 W. Amador Ave. and is then trucked to the Landfill.
Every day approximately 300 residential and small business customers from the city and county visit the Transfer Station. Customers pay $5 to dispose of up to 200 pounds of trash and dump it. Which is great! When it’s brought to the SCSWA, you can count on the thrown-away materials being handled properly, posing no threat now or in the future to our environment.
The customers are generally driving trucks, some pull trailers; the truck beds and the trailers are filled with household trash – that means bagged household trash, couches, carpeting, green waste, beds, scrap lumber and wood pallets, furniture, broken appliances, all sorts of materials headed for the landfill.
You can now see the process by watching the new 20-30 second video on the SCSWA Facebook page. Tarkeysha Burton, SCSWA recycling coordinator, explains, “We are getting a lot of hits on the Facebook page videos. We posted a 20 second video of our big 18-wheelers dumping trash at Corralitos Regional Landfill, and got a huge response.” To see the videos, if you are already on Facebook, type in TheSCSWA; or simply google “SCSWA Facebook.”
The residential and small commercial customers park on the south side of the complex, while city trash trucks back into the north side dumping materials into the “pit.” That’s where everything that everyone throws away is unloaded, “dozered” down to one end of the surge pit, and crushed in an industrial-sized compactor creating blocks of trash weighing 20,000 pounds. Two of the giant blocks of waste (totaling 40,000 pounds) are then hauled by each 18-wheeler making the trip to Corralitos Regional Landfill 15 miles west of Las Cruces.
On the north side of the giant “pit”, the city’s recyclables are unloaded in a designated area, compacted and packed into 18-wheelers for transport to the Friedman Recycling Plant in El Paso.
Check it out on the SCSWA Facebook page!
Green Connections is submitted by the South Central Solid Waste Authority (SCSWA), managing recyclables, solid waste, and fighting illegal dumping for residents and businesses in the City of Las Cruces and Doña Ana County. You can reach the SCSWA at (575) 528-3800 or visit www.SCSWA.net and now https://www.facebook.com/theSCSWA/