Frederiksen Court recycles, but Ames does not have a recycling program. Instead, the university housing community sends its newspaper, aluminum, clear glass and plastic to a facility in Waterloo.

The recycling program began in January at the request of students. At the end of spring semester, the Frederiksen Court Community Council was made aware of Ames’ methods of dealing with trash, said Mary Beth Golemo, apartment community director.

Ames does not have a traditional recycling plant or a traditional landfill. Story County sends all of its waste to the Resource Recovery Plant, 110 Center Ave., to be burned for use by the power plant.

Frederiksen Court will look at the program in the fall. Golemo said part of the program in and of itself is education, teaching students the “right thing to do.”

In 1971, the landfill in Ames was five years from being full.

“We knew we were going to be out of landfill space,” said Lorrie Hanson, principal clerk at the Resource Recovery Plant. “The plant seemed like the best option at the time.”

The plant receives garbage from nine carriers, Iowa State University and the Department of Transportation. The staff at the plant sorts the garbage, uses a magnet to remove the metal, sends the large items to a scrap dealer and shreds the rest.

“Our magnets take [the metal] out of the garbage and put it all in a big truck and drive it up to Minneapolis,” Hanson said. “They take all of the metal and melt it down and turn it into new metal.”

The Boone County landfill takes the garbage that is too heavy to be used at the power plant.

When garbage comes to the plant, it is dumped on the tipping floor which can hold 450 tons of waste.

“It has been so full it was just spilling out the door,” she said.

If the plant were to let the garbage sit – without using it for power – it would take the citizens of Story County two days to fill the floor.

The Resource Recovery Plant works in conjunction with the power plant.

“They call and ask us to shut off when the storage gets full,” Hanson said. They can also be asked to shut down during peak loads, because the recovery plant draws a lot of electricity to run.

“It is easier to call us and ask us to shut down to give them some more power than it is to ask one of the larger businesses in town,” Weidner said.

“Nobody else in Iowa deals with their garbage the way that we do,” Hanson said. “This has worked for us for 27 years and we have the support of an entire community – almost a whole county. That doesn’t happen very often.”

“We’re quite a unique place,” Weidner said. “We’re like a science experiment – nobody else really knows how the place works except the guys who work here.”

Explosions and renovations

Fire is one hazard associated with the plant.

“Our garbage isn’t buried at the end of the day, but it is in a confined space and if there is a fire, it could do a lot more damage structurally then it would in a landfill,” Hanson said.

In the past six years, the plant has had two major fires. One fire was caused by an explosion in the shredder.

“I was on the board when it happened. There was a lexon [really heavy plastic] window – if it wasn’t for that I’d be dead,” said Rob Weidner, lead operator. “The fire ball came at me and rolled up the wall. Everything, every piece of dust was out there – it looked like hell or a war zone.”

Fires are not uncommon in the plant, whose walls are stained with soot as a reminder.

The main renovation began in August 1995, but was not the result of any fire. This renovation, shared between the Resource Recovery Plant and the Ames Power Plant, cost about $7 million.

Weidner said the main purpose of the renovation was to remove explosion hazards. They put the garbage shredder in a separate room, with 18 inch thick walls.

“It’s not really foolproof, but it’s better than it was,” Weidner said.

In addition, they updated the storage bin and enclosed the conveyor system.

“Mainly the conveyors were covered so the new dust system they put in would be more effective,” Weidner said. “Basically, it creates less of a dust hazard throughout the plant.”

The renovation took almost a year and the plant had to shut down for that time. The shut down of the plant caused a noticeable deterioration in the Boone County landfill’s life expectancy, Hanson said.

In 1999, there was another, smaller renovation.

“We thought we should be able to collect more of this stuff that is going to the landfill, because some of it is good,” Weidner said. “The guys at the plant came up with their version of it and basically, for a day’s labor and about $100 worth of materials, we created a suction system that sucks some of the light stuff off that would otherwise be rejected.”

Rejects are sent to the landfill. The rejected material was up to 35 percent, but after the renovation it went down to about 26 percent.

The plant has kept their rejects under 25 percent for more than six months.

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