I spent the morning touring the Rumpke landfill. What surprised me the most was how clean it was and how little garbage I saw. Actually, the only garbage I saw was on the back of a truck as it rolled toward the "cell" where it could dump. It was all a very intensive, multi-layered, well-thought-out and regulated process. If I hadn't known I was at the dump, I wouldn't have guessed it. I couldn't even smell the garbage. Orange-colored cables were strung around the landfill provide odor protection.
I learned all sorts of statistics and facts, but I won't post those here. I don't remember most of them anyway. Here are the few human interest facts about the landfill that I will remember:
1. Rumpke was founded by two brothers who were in the business of delivering coal in 1932. They also owned some hogs and picked up garbage and food scrap as they made their deliveries. They used those scraps to feed their farm animals. They later began picking up garbage as garbage collectors and Rumpke was born.
2. Rumpke owns a hundred or so houses in the area and rent many of them out to their employees. Is it just me or does that smack of coal-mining towns?
3. I had to ask whether they ever had police coming to search through garbage for evidence. Yes, they do. But they don't have trucks dumping garbage in certain areas like you see in some TV shows and movies. Rumpke operates on a 24-hour schedule, so what they can trace is which truck brought it in, what time they logged in, and approximately where that garbage would be based on that information. They do, at times, take a GPS picture like some smaller dumps do, but not always. Discarded mail is the best clue that they're searching in the right spot.
4. And no - they have never uncovered any bodies.
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