"Warren" wrote in message
news:kX9Ab.240385$Dw6.833575@attbi_s02...
paghat wrote"

No such thing as too many leaves.

I understand where you're coming from, and from a practical level, one
person, or even one family couldn't collect what would be considered
"too many leaves". But a decade and a half ago, I worked for the public
works department of a large Midwest city. For five weeks each fall we
had trucks and tractors with leaf pushers, moving piles of leaves in the
streets into big piles. End loaders and tractors then pushed them into
garbage packers that had pans and hoppers attached to them. Three times
a day two dozen garbage packers full of leaves, along with a half dozen
full-size Vac-Alls, would converge at the dump. The resulting piles were
25 feet tall, 50 feet wide, and nearly a 1/4 of a mile long each year.
It would take three to five years, with usually no more than one chance
to turn a pile, for them to decompose. The DNR even required special
drainage to keep the run-off away from the stream running next to the
leaf dump. I believe that might qualify as too many leaves. (The last
year I lived in that city a "recycling" company appeared on the scenes,
and actually paid the city a couple of cents a load for the leaves.)

Nah, there are never too many leaves........... Just not enough urban
planning... Although I hope to stop "diverting" my neighbours' leaves from
the weekly pick-up soon. My compost heap is about 24' x 12' x 6' and will be
overwhelming to distribute come Spring..........

Hornsby Bend is.......
http://www.sbs.utexas.edu/hornsby/
"Hornsby Bend is - Austin's recycling center for sewage and yard
trimmings - the most popular birdwatching site in the Austin area - a
research site for urban ecology, biosolids, ecological restoration, and the
soil food web - a demonstration site for Green Building."

The Hornsby Bend Biosolids Treatment Facility
http://www.sbs.utexas.edu/hornsby/facility.html
"The remaining 55% of the dried biosolids are combined with the ground
tree trimmings from the City's Electric Utility and the City's yard trimming
stream for composting.
The screened product is sold as "Dilllo Dirt" through local landscapers,
garden centers, and nurseries. Over 100,000 cubic yards of materials are
diverted from land fills by this program annually."
"The lagoon sidestream treatment system cleans rain water and processed
water collect on the sight and, after final "polishing" through five acre
aquatic green house, the water is used to irrigate the on-sight farm. This
lagoon system covers three acre and attracts thousands of migrating birds
(and bird watchers) each Spring and Fall."