Vigilance is the watchword for landfill checkers

WILMINGTON - Jose Garcia stands atop a 145-foot mountain of trash, his gaze locked on the trucks dumping pile after pile of Delaware's waste just yards from his feet.

His trained eye scans the landscape for anything that doesn't belong - chemical drums, slabs of asbestos, red biohazard bags carrying used bandages or syringes.

Just two weeks before, one of Garcia's colleagues at Wilmington's Cherry Island Landfill discovered the body of former Pentagon official John P. Wheeler 3d as it tumbled from the back of an arriving truck.

Ever since, staff and contractors at this waste disposal site on a bank of the Delaware River have remained on a hypervigilant watch.

But the fact that Wheeler's body somehow made it to this point, at the end of Delaware's solid waste disposal system, underscores a lesson well-known to those who work day-to-day, like Garcia, as landfill spotters: Each new dump truck brings its own surprises.

"There's always trash," said his boss, Tony Casarino. "Keeping an eye on it is steady work."

At any landfill, ask those charged with monitoring trash and they're likely to spin you a story of their most unusual finds.

Spotters across the country have reported discovering everything from the carcasses of beached whales to caches of precious jewels.

Casarino, now a site supervisor with contractor Greggo & Ferrara, which oversees the compacting operation, got his start in the business as a landfill spotter at 19.

Although he declined to discuss how much he made back then or what he pays his employees now, government-paid landfill spotters at other dumps across the region bring in anywhere from $12.50 to $19 an hour.

Walking among the day's rising refuse on a recent visit, Casarino described the inspection process that each load of waste must go through before it is compacted and buried amid Cherry Island's 513 acres.

More than 500 dump trucks pass through the landfill's gates each day, bringing loads from across New Castle County. Each truckful is hauled up the mountain and eventually let loose on a 150-by-80-square-foot patch where Casarino's crews are working that day.

Employees of the Delaware Solid Waste Authority stop some haulers as they pass through the gates for spot checks, where compliance officers dig through the waste bag by bag, looking for contraband. State and federal regulations restrict the disposal of potentially harmful items such as chemical waste, hazardous construction materials, and biowaste, which could seep into nearby waters.

Once trash reaches the top of the heap, Casarino and his crew do a second scan. Workers like Garcia watch from afar as 60-ton spike-wheeled shovelers repeatedly plow over incoming trash compacting the day's haul - as much as 1,200 tons a day.

The conditions conspire against them. Whipping winter wind forces Garcia to don a wool balaclava, covering all but his eyes. A faint swampy smell permeates the area - stronger each time a new truck comes through. Seagulls perpetually swarm the growing heap, fighting each other and the compactors to snatch any exposed morsel.

Both Garcia and the heavy-equipment drivers keep an eye out for prohibited waste, but with volume this large, trash quickly becomes lost in the mass.

"You get calls occasionally from people that say they threw their wedding ring in the trash, or bags of money," said authority spokesman Michael Parkowski. "But with so much coming in, there's really nothing we can do."

Inspectors occasionally find medical waste inadvertently sent from area hospitals or out-of-state mail - a clue that a driver may have picked up his cargo across state lines, a practice prohibited by state law. But the discoveries at Cherry Island tend toward the mundane, Parkowski said.

Casarino describes the discovery of Wheeler's body as "definitely a first," but it's not the first time authorities have scoured Cherry Island for clues in the case of a prominent victim.

FBI agents used a rug pulled from the landfill in 1996 as evidence while investigating the killing of Anne Marie Fahey, the scheduling secretary to then-Delaware Gov. Thomas Carper. Fahey went missing that year after dining at a Philadelphia restaurant with lawyer Thomas J. Capano, who was later convicted of her murder.

That Wheeler's body was discovered at all is something of a miracle, Casarino said. On Dec. 31, a truck hauling waste from somewhere in New Castle County picked up the body and brought it to Cherry Island.

One of Casarino's heavy equipment drivers spotted the corpse moments before driving over it with his massive compacting machine.

"It's a good thing he noticed it. Otherwise, we wouldn't be having this conversation," he said, suggesting that Wheeler's body might never have been found.

How it ended up there remains a mystery. Although Newark, Del., police have ruled Wheeler's death a homicide, police have yet to identify any suspects.

Witness reports and security footage indicated the 66-year-old defense contractor spent much of the two days prior to his discovery wandering disoriented through the streets of Wilmington.

The case has attracted international attention both because of where his body was found and his background and accomplishments, which included advising Pentagon brass, successfully pushing for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall, and serving as the first chief executive of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

But for Casarino and his employees, the discovery validates what keeps them in a job, scanning every day, looking for an unexpected find.

"This is the most valuable real estate in all of Delaware," Casarino said, referring to the limited space available for waste disposal. "We've got to make sure it's put to good use."