In Louisiana, for example, the number of landfills went from 800 in 1980 to 30 this year. The state Department of Environmental Quality said that number will be reduced to 11 by the year 2000. The LSU Ag Center's compost facility includes demonstration versions of three of the main pieces of equipment needed at a composting facility tub grinder, traummel screen and windrow turner. The tub grinder, which is like a big garbage disposal, can take waste as big as a tree trunk and grind it into smaller pieces. The traummel screen is like a sifter.
Materials rotate in a screened drum so pieces that are too large can be filtered out.
But we want to get better. Breitenbeck and Carney are working to get funding to expand the capabilities of the facility to take in and compost municipal biosolids and hazardous wastes. Control of invading plants may help to reclaim marsh T his is the time of year when gardeners go out to hunt down and kill unwanted vegetation, also known as weeds. An LSU researcher is on a similar hunt, but he is trying to weed-out a grass that is threatening a fragile marsh in southern Mexico. Irv Mendelssohn of LSU's Wetland Biogeochemistry Institute and four other researchers were chosen from ecologists from the United States and South America to study, at different times, at one of six labs operated by Mexico's Institute for Ecology.