The City of Tucson plans to reconfigure the entry to the Los Reales Landfill, with the following goals: Increase safety on the site and working face, separate commercial from self haulers, encourage recycling and reuse of materials, encourage development of “cottage industries” to divert waste from the landfill. As a part of this effort, LRD has led a series of design workshops with City staff, commercial haulers, and self haulers to study traffic flow at the entry and onto the working face of the landfill itself. More than 48 options were studied, and consensus was reached on one that allowed commercial haulers to proceed directly to the landfill, while keeping self haulers below at a Convenience Center and Recycling Facility.

All traffic flows through one set of scales, to minimize staff requirements and allow staff to manage traffic flow on the site. With our civil and traffic consultants, we were able to develop traffic flow that encourages self haulers to recycle in order to reduce weight before proceeding over the scales. The site has been designed to have flexibility, allowing the Convenience Center to be used for large recycling loads if necessary during the week.

The project will be LEED Certified at a Silver level. The project will also include a program of educational exhibits designed to make the public aware of the impact that recycling, methane harvesting, and conservation can have on the environment. Studies have shown that the impact possible through such measures may exceed all other efforts at conservation undertaken by the City.