Photos: Rest in pieces
Mike Speiser climbs down from his bulldozer for a lunch break after churning over mounds of garbage at the Puente Hills Landfill, one of the largest such facilities in the nation. Nearly 4 million tons of junk and muck, one-third of Los Angeles County’s trash, is added to this man-made mountain each year. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
A bulldozer plows through mounds of garbage at the Puente Hills Landfill. This graveyard of society’s wants and needs sits hidden in plain sight along a truck-choked stretch of the 60 Freeway in the San Gabriel Valley. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Mike Speiser drives his bulldozer over mounds of garbage at the landfill. “It’s kind of like laying concrete. You’ve got to work it to get the proper grade,” said Speiser, 45, a genial man who has been squeezing himself into the cab of this machine for nearly 20 years. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
A trucker prepares to unlatch his load of trash at the landfill. Beginning before dawn, a parade of trucks bounces up a sinuous roller coaster of a road that’s constantly burping from the digestion below. They deposit their loads on the day’s “cell” -- an acre that will rise 20 feet in the next few hours before it’s entombed beneath a layer of dirt. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
