Mussel Rock landfill work soon completed, first week in January, 2014

Pacifica Tribune/Jane Northrop, "Daly City approves contract for Mussel Rock landfill maintenance." 

Daly City City Council approved a $567,000 contract with Half Moon Bay based Stoloski and Gonzalez Construction Company to perform essential maintenance work on the Mussel Rock landfill.

Truck and land fill testing equipment

Mussel Rock recreation area

Comments from John Fuller, Daly City's public work director.   "You have to rearmour the face of it," he said. "Without the seawall the ocean would eventually start to erode the soil at the water's edge of the landfill, which would expose the trash buried there. Without the seawall, the landfill would not exist."  This project involves a lot of armouring, with huge boulders in use -- 5,000 tons of rock in four-ton boulders brought in to bolster the seawall.

The landfill holds one million cubic yards of garbage.  "We have to do a lot of realigning to some of the drainage ditches to keep the garbage buried," Fuller said. "I don't think it's in the public's best interest to relocate that material ever unless something happens, such as an earthquake ."  Read article.

Related -  San Francisco Examiner/Brendan P. Bartholomew, 12/3/13. "Daly City approves contract for Mussel Rock Landfill improvements." "Adjacent to Allied Waste’s Mussel Rock Transfer Station, the site sits on the coast near the Pacifica-Daly City border. According to a staff report, the site’s upkeep is crucial, because it sits within a landslide-prone area. Maintenance is necessary, staff said, because ground movement and erosion could cause buried waste to be released into the ocean. .... The location is popular with dog walkers and paragliders, he said, and Daly City is proposing various improvements designed to make the site more parklike. Fuller said likely improvements would include benches, picnic tables, new signage and changes to the parking lot to accommodate people with disabilities."   

Terra Engineers, Mussel Rock Landfill, "... professional services, environmental monitoring."  "Mussel Rock Landfill is located along the Pacific Coast and, because of an unfavorable geologic setting, has been the site of significant landslides and erosion in the past.  ....  The monthly observations and the results of the groundwater levels and water quality measurements are provided in annual and semi-annual reports to the Regional Water Quality Control Board."

Note:  paraglider photograph by June Morrall from Half Moon Bay Memories and El Granada Observer/Muscle Rock.  Truck and testing equipment photograph by Brendan P. Bartholomew from The San Francisco Examiner article above.

Posted by Kathy Meeh