Ron Smith has seen a lot in his 10 years of working with landfills, including his two years here at McCommas Bluff. Like the time one of his crews found a dead body.

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“We did have a deceased gentleman out here about a year and a half ago, and we called the police right away,” he says. “We’ve also had to call the police when we’ve found meth labs. That sort of stuff doesn’t happen very often, but it does happen.”

Then there was the time he unearthed a box with three Rolex watches and four large diamond rings.

“It turned out a family had been cleaning out their home and accidentally threw the box away, but we were able to return it to them,” he says.
“And another time Sears dropped off five refrigerators, which we now use in our offices. That’s what they call ‘salvaging’ — it’s a legal term.”