Turns Out "Minimal Impact" Means "Not in My Backyard"

Trash doesn’t vanish. It just moves to someone else’s backyard.

You ever try doing the right thing and still get spit on for it?

Try showing up to work every day at a landfill, busting your ass to protect the environment, follow every rule, and keep the community safe, only to be screamed at by someone with a protest sign in one hand and a Facebook article in the other. People who don’t know the regulations. People who don’t know the engineering. People who don’t want to understand anything past a five-second headline or a bad Google search.

And yet they show up, shouting about toxins, cancer, and radioactive waste like we’re villains in hazmat suits hiding barrels of glowing sludge.

News flash: We aren’t the problem. We’re the reason you don’t have one.

You may not like the landfill being here, hell, sometimes I don’t either, but while you’re yelling at the gate, we’re inside managing what your world throws away.

Every. Single. Day.

They said it wouldn’t affect anyone. “Minimal impact.”

Those were the words in the public meeting, printed on the packet, polished in the press release.

But I work here. I see the faces. I hear the trucks, I feel the wind shift, and I get the complaints, sometimes in person, sometimes online, sometimes just through the look someone gives me when I forget to change and wear my uniform shirt to the gas station.

I’m an operator at the landfill.

Not the guy who pushed the permit through. Not the developer.

Not the politician who stood at the podium smiling like the host of a bad game show.

I’m the one making sure the trash is covered at the end of every day.

I’m the one double-checking the slope, so it doesn’t fail.

I’m the one standing next to a gas well when it’s 98 degrees and the flare’s burning hotter than hell.

And let me tell you this, there's nothing minimal about the impact.

Not for the neighbors outside the gate. And not for the people working inside it.

I get it. Really, I do.

If I lived next to this site and didn’t know how it all worked, I’d probably be angry too.

About the trucks. The smell. The uncertainty. The fact that someone made this decision without ever having to deal with the aftermath.

But here’s what most folks don’t see: we’re doing everything we can to manage the mess.

We didn’t choose this location. We didn’t design the access road or pick the liner system.

But we’re the ones who show up every damn day trying to protect the environment, keep things in compliance, and keep our community from becoming a headline.

And let's clear something else up, because I've heard the whispers. Just because you see a truck pulling into a landfill doesn’t mean its toxic waste. It doesn’t mean it’s radioactive. And no, it doesn’t mean it’s going to cause cancer.

It means someone cleaned out their garage. Someone’s fridge stopped working. Someone’s diapers, expired leftovers, or broken drywall ended up where all of it ends up: here.

What left your house is now in mine, and I’ve handled it with more precision, regulation, and care than most people even know exists.

This isn’t some Hollywood disaster site. It’s a highly engineered system, managed by people who actually understand what’s in those loads and how to contain it safely.

So before jumping to conclusions or repeating what someone’s cousin posted on Facebook, maybe ask the people who work the job what’s actually happening. We might surprise you.

And yet…

When the opposition group rolls up, they don’t yell at the county board. They don’t storm the meetings with the executives or file complaints to the permitting agency. They yell at us.

At the teams trying to do right.

At whoever is in the scalehouse working through lunch. At the operators fixing pumps in the middle of a downpour. At a contractor who happens to be onsite repairing a vacuum line on a wellhead that hasn't stop giving you trouble for the last few months.

We didn’t fail this community. The system did. And now we’re the ones caught in the middle, between silence at the top and rage at the fence line.

I go home dirty every day. Not just with mud and grease, but with the weight of the job.

With the knowledge that I’m trying to do something good in a place most people have written off. And that no matter how well we run it, how compliant we stay, how much pride we take in getting it right… someone will still look at me like I’m the problem.

My kids hear things at school. My family keeps their heads down at the store.

And I start to wonder, why am I still doing this?

Because I care. Because if we don’t do it right, someone worse might do it wrong.

Because this landfill matters, whether people want to admit it or not.

But caring shouldn't come at the cost of being vilified.

So, here’s my ask, to the community, the opposition group, the decision-makers sitting at safe distances behind polished desks:

Stop pretending the people working here are your enemy. We’re not. We’re your neighbors.

We’re your safety net. And sometimes, we’re the only thing standing between an engineered system and environmental disaster.

So yeah, turns out "minimal impact" really just means not in my backyard.

For some of us, the backyard is the landfill, and we don’t have the luxury of looking away.

But here’s the truth, why would we want to? This place isn’t perfect, but it’s real. It’s regulated, it’s monitored, and it’s run by people who care deeply about doing the right thing, even when it’s hard.

It’s not just trash, dirt and dozers. It’s a safe, healthy, and incredibly rewarding place to work.

We protect air, water, and public health every single day, and we do it without needing applause.

So, while the world turns its nose up, we’ll keep showing up. Because some of us still believe that the most important work happens in the places most people stop looking.

And if that’s here? Then we’re damn proud to stand in it

Signed,

A landfill operator who sees more than most and still shows up.