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It’s a short ride on a sunny, arid morning down Congress Street in downtown Tucson, Arizona, to the dusty field that’s home to the Rio Nuevo landfills.
Right now, Nearmont, the smallest of three landfills on the site, doesn’t look at all like one. It’s just a bumpy 90-acre stretch of wide-open, dusty land beneath the shadow of downtown’s skyscrapers and against the bone-dry Santa Cruz River.
Drive back about 1,000 feet on the utility road, and you’ll see a chain link fence with an open gate. The chain link surrounds a square plot of land, fifty feet long and wide. On the plot at exact intervals is a nine-point grid of PVC piping penetrating the landfill beneath. A small construction trailer sits against the fence. And across from that, a large utility box, wires running into the ground.
To the untrained eye, it looks to be nothing more than a Tucson city water experiment. Or to the more suspicious in the desert, a covert government project. But this experimental PVC pipe grid - and what it’s doing underneath the landfill - could change the way brownfields sites of tomorrow are remediated.
Past, Future and Present
Behind the chain link fence is the City of Tucson’s bioreactor project. It is the physical beginning of a monumental and aggressive brownfields land remediation and redevelopment project. The landfill will become part of Rio Nuevo - an entire city district in the heart of Tucson’s downtown.
Projected, Rio Nuevo will take at least 20 years and $350 million to complete. The new bioreactor technology on Nearmont is paving the way for the Rio Nuevo of the future: an entire city district that will pay homage to the city’s historic past as one of the oldest settlements in the West.
In fact, archeologists have found that people have lived in the Tucson area as far back as 2,600 years ago. What’s now Nearmont was once part of the land where the San Augustin Mission was established in mid 1700s. The old Mission included a convento - a priest’s residence and trade school - a mission garden, a chapel, a granary and smaller storage buildings, the entire grounds surrounded by a wall. By 1840, the Mission had finally been abandoned.
As the Mission ruins disappeared into the late 1800s and early 1900s, the site became home to a clay pit. That ceased operations for good in the 1940’s, until it became its final incarnation: a 1950’s-era city dump. For twelve years, the site saw the only the city’s trash, until it was closed and forgotten in 1962. Thirty-seven years passed until Rio Nuevo had its rebirth.
In November of 1999, Tucson politicians put Proposition 400 in front of the voters - its purpose to raise $60 million in Arizona state tax money over ten years to help fund the Rio Nuevo project. It passed by a convincing 62% margin.
Among the planned projects at Rio Nuevo are a full-scale recreation of the San Augustin Mission and adjoining Cultural Plaza. Also planned are an Arizona Historical Museum, an American Indian Cultural Center and a Mercado with retail stores. More downtown housing will be added. Future additions include the Sonoran Sea Aquarium, the Tucson Science Center, an IMAX Theatre, an expanded Tucson Convention Center, and a City Visitor’s Center.
But the completed vision of Rio Nuevo is some years away. What Rio Nuevo has now is what’s behind the chain link fence - the experimental bioreactor.
100 Years in 40 Months
Underneath the Nearmont landfills lie decades of Tucson refuse. Between 15 and 50 feet of it.
The problem: the trash beneath the landfill must be degraded and made non-reactive. That, added with the methane gas landfills naturally produce make it too undesirable for building. Otherwise, any construction on the land would be at least century away - the time it would take the garbage in Nearmont to degrade naturally.
Tucson’s Office of Environmental Management (OEM), however, was preparing a solution - the bioreactor. But remediation technology like it had never been used before. If it did work, and proved safe and cost-effective, it would be used to remediate the other landfills.
The process it performs is called enhanced aerobic degradation. Simply, the nine-spot PVC pipe grid - dug under the ground and inside the landfill - naturally accelerates the landfill degradation by pumping controlled amounts of air and water into the refuse itself.
According to the data OEM has collected so far, the bioreactor will break down and settle the refuse, as well as eliminating the landfill’s natural methane production, in about 40 months. The end result: Composted land, ready for development.
Not only that, Tucson’s bioreactor has proven safe and cost-effective. Most importantly, it works. So well, that it's being made into a full-scale system for use on all three landfills.
That's what i'm listening to wright now as I type these words...; "Walk on by" from the cd "Isaac Hayes - Ultimate collection " The clenched fist, the boy's look, the hoodie...It all breaths some kind of "Don't mess with me" attitude you see a lot these days amongst young people.What are they afraid of? Of not being respected? This all "angry attitude", this "shielding attitude" is no means to get to that respect.
I know the world is becoming more and more self centered, self focused and it's hard times for lots of people.I'm going to stop ranting on because I would loose my "cool".All I wanted to say is ; cut each other some slack and we'll all get along.Show respect and you'll get it back.All people are dignified,sensitive and have emotions.We all feel the same.
1: It was an overcast cool but pleasent day. Benjamin asked if we could head on down to the play ground on our bikes and spend a bit of time there. He had been good all day so I decided that we could go down there for a bit before we picked Elizabeth up from day care.
2: As we ride to the park it is always ammusing when we get to the Murray River bridge and the kids have to cross on the very bumpy railway sleepers and how much they bump and buck the kids around.
Today with all the rain that had fallen up streen the spill-way was flowing very fast. This took Benjamins attention away from the bumps as he stared at ore of the water flowing so voilently.
3: We were having fun at the park on all the equipment when all of a sudden we noticed that it started to get dark. I checked the radar on my phone and noticed that we were about to get rain in the next 5 minutes. I quickly looked for a place to go to stay dry in but it was too late.
I placed the bike as close as I could to one of the trees in the park to keep them dry. Whilst I was doing this Benjamin noticed that the fork in the tree was not getting wet and proposed we jump into the tree to stay dry. I jumped up in there and gave him a hand to join me. Then the rain really came down, as you can see in Benjamins face he was a bit supprised at one how wet it was and two that we were stayin so dry in the tree. It lasted only for a few minutes but it was enough to make most of the play equipment too wet to play on.
4: After the rain passed we hopped out the tree and assessed the play equipment. We had a bit of a play on the climbing rope A-frame as it was about the only safest piece of equipment that wasn't slippery from the rain, that's if you call climbing 20 meters into the air on ropes safe and hanging over the side. The A-frame fared well because it is mostly covered by the trees, where all the other equipment is open to the elements.
5,6: After we finished on the A-frame I suggested we head down to teh river where we could find some stones on the bank to throw and skip. Benjamin loved throwing and skipping the rocks in the water. Anoyingly he found that if he threw the stones at the pilons hat hold up the bridge they make a cool "ting" noise. As much as I enjoyed his delight in hereing this I put a stop to it as it was a bit loud and did not want to encourage damage to the bridge.
At this point it was time to head off from the play ground. I suggested to Benjamin that we go for a ride along the bike track and explore where it went. Turns out it went to the boar ramp on the western end of town. We played there for a while throwing sticks into the river and pretending they were boats to see which one would beat the other one out of site.
Whilst Benjamin was playing on a wall at the top of a hill he accidently scraped his arm down the wall and it caused a large grase. I normaly carry a small first aid kit for such occasions but this time I did not have the trailer with me so we decided to head on over to the shopping centre and grab a bandaid from the chemist.
7: After I had patched Benjamin up we stopped by Muffin Break and we each got a muffin and shared a large chocolate milk shake. Clearly this took all the pain away and the injury became a distant memory with teh taste of a sweet sweet muffin.
After we met up with Jane at the shopping centre and I pollished off my muffin I placed Benjamins half muffin into my drink holder and we headed back home. The ride home was dry and filled with fun from racing each other to certain spots along the track. With a helping push on the back every now and then to get Benjamin up to a faster spped we made it home in about 10 minutes and were soon hopping into the car to go and grab Elizabeth from day care.