Bergen County Baler Facility

Disposal Road continues south along the base of the Kingsland Landfill, past landfill gas collection points, where methane from the landfill is burned to produce electricity. The road leads to an abandoned baler facility once operated by Bergen County at the former entrance to the Kingsland and Erie Landfills. The Meadowlands Commission was a pioneer in a number of aspects of landfill management, including techniques for compressing the incoming garbage. Trash would come first to large sheds next the landfill where it would be compacted by hydraulic compressors into squares, roughly a cubic yard in size, weighing around 3,000 pounds each. These bales would be loaded onto trucks, and stacked in the landfill with front loaders. This system was abandoned when these landfills were closed. The massive baling facility is itself now trash.