Wellesley’s humongous leaf mountain range begging for a name
It looks as though all that leaf blowing (and blowing and blowing and blowing…) in Wellesley has resulted in a new natural wonder at the Recycling & Disposal Facility.
Thinking the “Leave the Leaves” campaign isn’t exactly killing it.
A virtual mountain range of leaves and paper bags has risen at the dump. Our own squishy Himalayas beckoning parachuters to plunge into them.
What becomes of the leaves dumped at the RDF? We assumed composting, but reached out to RDF Superintendent James Manzolini to get the real dirt.
“The RDF manages as many leaves as it can on site. Leaves will be ‘windrowed’ and ‘turned’ a few times over 2 or 3 years, break down, and turn into a compost material. Then we will screen them so we can get a consistent size product and offer it to the residents as screened compost. We also sell that screened compost product to a local greenhouse. In FY24 roughly 2,400 CY [cubic yards] of screened compost was processed and moved off site,” he said.
Manzolini continued: “As an additional relief valve (if space gets tight on our site) the RDF will truck 100 CY of leaves at a time up to the Town of Lexington. Lexington has a robust composting program and they will process them in the same way.”
