King George County Landfill

About the Program
The King George County Landfill is a solid waste and recycling facility owned by WM. This facility is located in northeastern Virginia, just an hour and 15 minutes north of Richmond, Virginia, and sandwiched between the Potomac River and the Rappahannock River. There are many projects on-site that include educational tours to the public, basking logs for turtles, purple martin nest boxes, eastern bluebird boxes, pollinator gardens and 0.5 acres of native planted trees. The goal of these projects is to not only attract native flora and fauna to the site and provide shelter for the native wildlife, but also to educate the public on the importance of these efforts. 

Practices and Impacts

• The awareness and community engagement tours are meant to educate the public on the variety of conservation projects on site. The pre- and post-tour quizzes that are administered show a vast increase in knowledge from the learners after the tours are complete.
• Purple martin houses were installed on-site to provide this native species with nesting opportunities as they rely heavily on artificial structures for nesting. Unfortunately, only eastern bluebirds and starlings were found using these houses in the last two years. 
• The pollinator garden was reseeded in 2021 to establish new native wildflower and grass growth to attract pollinator species. This meadow/grassland is weeded annually and monitored monthly with quadrat sampling to ensure native plant species are thriving. 
• In June 2021, several large and small basking structures were added to ponds on-site to provide basking opportunities for the native eastern painted turtle. Monitoring efforts showed that many juvenile and adult turtles were using these structures in the warmer months. 
• The bluebird project started in 2019 with the placement of eastern bluebird nesting boxes along the edge of the on-site grasslands. Two additional boxes were added in 2022 due to the huge success of these boxes, and seven broods were found nesting in all of these boxes by the end of the season.
• In April 2021, four species of trees were planted in a grassy area that was previously used to store equipment. These 12 trees unfortunately had low survivability, so the dead ones were replaced in 2022.