Landfill to Star on Small Screen?

With its future shrouded in uncertainty as a result of the recent Oregon Supreme Court decision calling the dump's expansion into doubt, is Riverbend Landfill looking to the Small Screen to keep its coffers full?

Little birds (mainly seagulls and falcons) have dropped serious hints lately that our lowly mountain of a dump may soon be streaming on a screen near you!

Imagine twenty hardy women and men, provisioned with nothing more than machetes, canteens, hefty bags of rice, nose plugs, and the clothes on their backs, living off the land for six weeks.  You've guessed it!  Survivor: Landfill is expected to begin filming at the dump in November.

Sources tell us that CBS Television decided to go with a winter format to maximize contestants' misery, a hallmark of the show.  Contestants can expect floods, snow, hordes of seagulls and vermin, falcon attacks, miasmic odors, and thousands of tons of garbage.  They will have to dodge coyotes and well-drilling rigs and watch for toxic leachate leaks.

  

While participants will be forced to flee from the waste while it's being dumped, they will also be competing with mighty bulldozers, tractors, excavators, compactors, grapples, and loaders for the precious foodstuffs and textiles buried in the dumped trash.  From the looks of things, they won't want for comfy furniture, protection from the elements, soft beds, or even personal waste disposal!

Photo of dump in snow by Delahanty; bottom, dump runoff enters McPhillips Creek

Contestants will be able to augment their food supplies with fish, including delicacies such as six-legged frogs, they catch themselves in the South Yamhill River across from the old leaking Whiteson dump.  They can also snare the critters that frequent the landfill, including the aforementioned birds and vermin.

Participants should not lack for shelter, however, as the dump is covered with tarps they can use for tent material.  And numerous methane leaks will provide a ready fuel for fire.

We're told that the winner -- the Sole Survivor -- will be honored with a special reward for surviving this ordeal:  a year's free waste disposal!  Of course, he or she will have to bring the garbage to the landfill themselves.

We look forward to this amazing show -- or would, if Survivor: Landfill weren't an April Fool!