Beyond the curb, Lindsey Sampson handles Lee's garbage

EVAN WILLIAMS / FLORIDA WEEKLY Lindsey Sampson Lee County was just beginning to emerge from out the primitive era of trash collection in 1991 when it hired Lindsey Sampson. Recycling was in its infancy and the county's new wasteto energy plant was just coming on line. Mr. Sampson's first job was project manager for the new plant, which creates electricity from burning trash.

Until 1990, "You had twice a week pickup and everything went to a landfill," he said.

Processing garbage became a multifaceted task as the population and environmental concerns grew. Now, said Mr. Sampson, who has been director of the Lee County Solid Waste Division since 1997, "You can't just have a landfill; you can't just have an incinerator; you can't just have recycling."

By having it all, the idea is to not only dispose of the garbage, but get something valuable out of it in the process.

"It is an effective, responsible way to handle all this trash," Mr. Sampson said. "Folks don't necessarily think of it that way, but that's what they have come to expect and in some ways demand. You don't just throw it away. You try to get some value from the materials you collect."

For example, Mr. Sampson plans on beginning a program of blending yard waste with sewer sludge and making compost for agriculture. In a few years, more advanced recycling technology might be available, which could increase the amount the county recycles. The price tags on such programs are the only hindrance.

"We work very hard to keep the cost for all this affordable," Mr. Sampson said.

For the last 13 years, the solid waste budget has increased by only 1 percent per year, even while the county grew at a rate of nearly 30 percent since 2000, according to census numbers. For fiscal 2009, Lee commissioners budgeted $80 million for taking care of an estimated 570,000 tons of garbage. About 10 percent of that is recycled.

The rest ends up at the waste-toenergy plant on Buckingham Road. It's dumped into a concrete holding bin about three stories high. Two workers sit in a clear box overlooking the bin, using huge metal grabbers, like in a video arcade game, to drop 6,000 or 7,000 pounds of it at a time into bins leading to the incinerator.

Contained in the plant's belly, the fire burns around the clock, seven days a week and all year, turning the garbage to ash. Combustion units convert the energy from the fire into about 60 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 40,000 houses. A third unit added last year was honored by Power & Energy, a trade magazine for the electric power industry, with the 2008 Renewable Energy Expansion Project of the Year.

The leftover ash is transported to a landfill in Hendry Country. That's because in 1990, Lee Commissioners made an ongoing agreement that they would process Hendry's trash so commissioners could avoid the political hot-potato of having to build a new landfill one of their districts.

"It wasn't a bad quid pro quo," Mr. Sampson said.

Before joining the government-owned trash collection system in Lee, Mr. Sampson worked in construction management for private firms. He led the building of mechanical, electrical and environmental systems on large projects in Orlando and Philadelphia, including One Liberty Place, the City of Brotherly Love's second tallest skyscraper at 945 feet.

Mr. Sampson, 55, grew up in small-town Ohio and graduated from the University of Cincinnati with a bachelor's in science and civil engineering. Before beginning a career in earnest, he went to work for a Pennsylvania steel mill, earning money in pursuit of a dream to travel the world.

"When I got out of college, I thought that it was kind of a weird thing to think about and dream about," he said. "Because what if I don't make it?"

So he went. Mr. Sampson and his future wife, toured Europe for six months in a used car they bought there.

"Greece, England, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands," he said, trying to remember all the countries they stopped in. "… We just had a little pup tent. We'd go down a dirt road, put up the tent, and take a look around the next day."

For another six months after returning to the U.S., a Ford van became a means of housing, and transportation to places like The Grand Canyon, Yosemite National Park and the redwood forests in California.

Mr. Sampson and his wife moved to Lee County in 1987, the year the first of their two daughters was born. In 1993, they bought a home in Cape Coral on a canal.

"Besides my wife, it's one of the best decisions I've ever made," he said.

Most of his time is spent working on what happens to your trash after it leaves the curb; his office is even known around home as his "mistress."

Mr. Sampson's other love is his boat. To take a break from garbage, he likes to motor out to Pine Island Sound, the beach's back bays, Sanibel, Captiva and waters all over Southwest Florida.