Every morning at 6 a.m., the guy in charge of one of Charleston’s muddiest, most rugged worksites makes the drive across intentionally dug channels over mountains built of trash in an electric pickup truck, often with the windows rolled down.
Overhead, bald eagles often soar or perch nearby waiting for something good to show up, and below the surface of retention ponds, alligators may be lurking while cranes and herons wade at the shallows.
These images contrast with most people’s ideas of what a landfill really looks (and smells) like.
And soon, Charleston County’s will get even bigger.
The Bees Ferry Landfill collects an average of 275,000 tons of trash per year. It makes an easy target for nearby residents who see the site as stinky, dirty or otherwise unsightly.
“But for the record, it’s YOUR waste,” laughed Tom Cue, Charleston County’s environmental management director. “We’re not the bad guys. We aren’t generating anything here. I have to make that clear to people.”
But Cue said folks at the landfill go to great lengths to make sure they stay clean, organized and efficient.
The most useful commodity
Since early 2023, Cue has overseen hundreds of county employees, all working to make sure residents’ trash is disposed of properly — recyclables go to the Material Recovery Facility (MRF), nonrecyclables to the landfill. But the landfill is running out of space.
“We have approximately, right now, about nine years left here at Bees Ferry,” Cue said. “But there are still things about this property that could still be utilized.”
The landfill is divided into five cells, each with a different size ranging from a few acres to more than a dozen. But one of those cells — Cell 3 — was used decades ago as a dumping ground for ash. It topped out at 40 feet, leaving more than 100 feet of airspace that wasn’t used.
“We’re now in the process of pulling all of that ash out,” Cue said. “We’re going to have a brand-new cell at the end. We’re relining it, going all the way down to the bottom of that ash, ripping everything out and putting in brand new systems. We’re starting from scratch.”
And right beside it, Cell 6 is under construction. The tandem cells are expected to be completed by the end of 2027 and add another 20 years to the landfill’s lifespan on Bees Ferry, assuming operations managers use the space effectively — and they do, Cue said.
“Air space is the No. 1 most expensive thing for the county,” he said. “We have 170-foot maximum height, and we’re only at about 90 feet all the way around.”
He also accounts for settlement, the process by which the mountains of waste naturally compact and sink over time. But the landfill team compacts all its trash properly to prevent it from being a logistical issue.
And the refurbishment of Cell 3, Cue said, serves a dual purpose. The ash has hardened to lyme, a useful commodity used in construction. It’s already approved to be reclaimed and used for roads.
Good report cards
Cue said he is proud of the work done at Bees Ferry, noting the strict regulations the team has to comply with, and the frequent checks from state officials. He took the reins in February 2023.
“Several years ago, we were failing some [S.C. Department of Environmental Services] inspections,” he said. “They were coming, and the place needed to be run better. Now, from March 2023 through today, we’ve passed every single inspection. More than 40 in a row. I’m pretty proud of that, and it all comes back to the mindset of the team here. … This place just needed a little bit of guidance
“The group we have now, while colorful and funny, understands that the buck stops with us,” he added. “We need to make sure the county is being protected. We hold high regard to the taxpayers who pay us. We understand it’s your hard-earned money that pays our checks.”
One of the hardest parts of the job is convincing people that the effort they put into the system actually matters. Even years after the recycling center’s opening, people are still suspicious that the items they toss in the blue bins may end up in the landfill anyway.
Not only is that not true, Cue said, but crews on-site at the landfill are also keeping an eye out for recyclables that mistakenly ended up there, so they can be pulled aside and later trucked to the MRF.
“I give them pictures so they can see what they need to look out for, if they can,” he explained. “Obviously, there’s a safety item of getting out of your heavy dozer in the middle of an active workplace. So if we miss a piece of cardboard or two, it’s fine. But most of the time, when conditions are proper, we can figure it out. They get out, pick it up and throw it in a container.”
Logistics and engineering
“I’ve been doing this for about 30 years, and we all joke about it,” Cue said. “We sit down with engineers, geologists, lawyers and operators, all skilled at what they do. But people still picture five guys in the basement smoking cigars asking, ‘Where do we dump this crap today?’ That’s not what this is.
“We are one of the top five monitored industries in the world,” he continued. “Disposing of waste is so heavily monitored and permitted. We have to live up to really strong expectations, and I couldn’t do it myself.”
Water is the primary driver of some of the biggest problems a landfill can face — smell, pests, hazardous conditions and more. Minimizing those impacts is a whole other beast, with strategically dug channels leading to retention ponds throughout the landfill. A few gators even call them home, Cue said.
Near one of the ponds is the leachate treatment system, which is a water facility that handles about 200,000 gallons of leachate — or water that has run through the landfill’s waste — and sends it off to larger treatment plants across the county.
“As soon as water hits the surface of the landfill and sinks into the trash, it becomes this,” Cue said. “But if we do stormwater control properly, and we grade properly and build the right trenching systems, everything gets to the stormwater pond. And that minimizes the dirty water. We can direct it.”
And in each individual cell, layers of technically designed material are meant to extend the lifespan of the landfill as much as possible.
“People think we’re just digging a hole and throwing crap in it, but they need to see the layers and the technology that goes into it,” Cue said.
Liners, soil, compacted clay and more build the surface on which the waste sits, and the layers house drainage pipes and channels to filter and direct water and decomposing waste. But even all that engineering can’t save an industry that relies on waste in a society that is getting better and better at conservation and recycling.
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