Landfill won't go away!

[Pengwuino 2]

I'm having a problem of a landfill not going away. Ive done some searches and I can't seem to find anything that helps delete hte landfills. My garbage is down to 0 in the graphs, I have 3 waste-to-energy plants going at about 75% capacity so i know theres no net garbage (along with the info on the landfill...) and I just can't get these last 4 tiles of landfill to go away. Is there anyway to just cheat and remove the tiles contents?

[tungston 19]

It takes a long time after the graph appears to be at zero for the very last trace of trash to be completely gone. When that happens you should be able to dezone them. If not, then I don't know of anyway to get rid of them.

[shtyrayum 0]

Is your landfill connected to a road? I couldn't get my landfill to disappear until I removed all road connections. Now I use the Black Hole Waste Management lot, no more worrying about landfills.

[ScarcticCG 3]

This happens to me too.

I think it might be that in order to send your garbage to go from your sims to the neighboring city/WTE, the game is programmed to think that you need a little bit of landfill for it to start in. (So it "goes" to the landfill, THEN to the WTE)

[Legosim 14]

destroy all roads connecting to it, and put one or two garbage power plants, it should be gone in a month or so, depending on the size, and dezone the land that doesnt have garbage on it so it dont pile up while its being eaten by the power plant.

[Loney 22]

There is a bug that causes the game to make the landfill never go away. The bug can only be activated if you dezone the landfill into a irregular shape.

Here is a mode that will help speed up the landfill decomposing: https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/details.cfm?id=20802

[617squad 52]

use the cheater lots, though i personally don't recommend it as the waste lot is abit on the slow on the uptake....

[Pengwuino 2]

I put up 3 WTE plants, let the game run for a few years, destroyed roads, nothing going on.... think i hit the bug

[shtyrayum 0]

Try this lot.  https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/details.cfm?id=2865

Depending on which WtoE lots you are using you still may not have enough capacity.  I have a region of 2 million+ and not a single landfill.

[LKMarcus 3]

Never had that problem...but I thought you had to keep the road connected to the landfill so that the garbage can be transported away to the WTE, can't remember where I heard that from though.

[Xyloxadoria 1,098]

The reason the last bit of garbage doesnt go away is becsue for some reason it decreses in a exponential way, At first when something is made to get rid of garbage it will go away quickly. Then the rate will slow down until it is very slow near the end.  This mod changes that rate to be somewhat faster.

[whiteshade 4]

  I have mistakenly activated the bug being discussed while transfering a landfill to a more distant part of the map.  I take it that there is no DIRECT way to remove the ramaining trash, even with a cheat?

[DITRO 15]

I have had the same problem, but like Xyloxadoria said, when it gets to those four tiles it will take a long time, but it will eventually decompose, as it did in my game. Apparently that mod will speed it up, so give it a try. In the meantime, if it is negatively affecting desirability in an area, put a two- or three-tile wide border of grass plots from the park menu around it and development should come.

[zurrabear 20]

I've had this problem too. Recently I tried adding back in a few squares of landfill zone around the tiles that weren't going away, just on a theory. It didn't appear to do any good, but then when I finally dezoned those added tiles many game months later, the whole thing vanished! Possibly a graphical glitch of some kind, not sure.

[Merlin of Flyote 8]

Just as in real life you can't rebuild on Landfill for many years. So build landfill in the corner of a map, or a neighbouring city.

[mayor_brando 8]

Yes, it's because of this problem why I never put my landfills in my main city, always in a neighboring one.

[jmusacha 2]

My thought is that unless you have activated the landfill-bug described above by dezoning your landfill into an irregular (non square) shape, the landfill will disappear eventually -- it just takes time.  My experience has been the last 4 landfill tiles take over ten (10) years of in-game time to disappear.

So unless you deliberately want to retard your city's progress (and I believe there are perfectly legitimate reasons to do so), I would suggest not even zoning landfills in the first place.  At least you can destroy your trash-to-power plants overnight, unlike landfills, which will be around for years after the city government (you) decide to get rid of them.

[thegynophile 0]

I've had this problem. The bug I encountered was I somehow ended up with a landfill zone on uneven terrain, and the couple blocks of trash would decompose off of it no matter what, no matter how long I waited. I tried dropping an incinerator next to it but that didn't chnage the situation. I tried terraforming under it to put the land level but it wouldn't let me.

Eventually it became a moot point when my hard drive crapped out and I lost all my data and had top reinstall on the new drive. >_>

tl;dr, is your lanfill on even ground? If not, then erasing the city is probably the only way to get rid of it. Otherwise, put some low-wealth residential or dirty industry around it. They won't care.

[Larks2242 251]

try making water where the landfill is and than place land and see if it reset

[isgoed 2]

To make landfills go away you can use the "landfill eraser mod" https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/details.cfm?id=22737

I can even use it to remove the landfill bug. Just add some landfill zone and remove some zone to the buggy landfill, while preserving a rectangular shape. At some instance when you remove the zone the entire landfill will disappear.

I even tried drowning, meteorite hitting, vulcano's, recycling, waste to energy plants and disconnecting roads, but nothing works.

[zebulon_stonehenge 135]

No comments on this thread in 8 years. Interesting. I came here looking for answers to an "immortal landfill square" in a city of mine, and I tried all the techniques listed here (landfill mod, landfill eraser, zoning more landfill and unzoning, meteor attacks, teraforming, etc) but to no avail; that one immortal landfill square still remains.

I did, however, solve the problem. The solution is brutal but effective: I reverted the city to an earlier saved version that didn't have the landfill. I'm thinking this may be the only cure for this. (Unless someone comes up with a way to find a landfill in the city file and erase it from the file. I don't know how to do that, myself.)

What I've learned about landfills is this:

1. Always zone landfills as rows of 2x2 or 3x3 blocks.
2. If unzoning excess landfill, also unzone in quantums of 2x2 or 3x3 blocks, starting at the end farthest from the "in-use" portion.
3. Use the "Landfill Eraser" mod. If you haven't triggered the "immortal landfill" bug (by zoning and/or unzoning in irregular shapes), then you can get rid of any landfill by doing this: Remove all roads and zones within 5 squares, carefully advance the game clock to the 1st of the next month (no more), and pause. The garbage will wink-out on the 1st and a "no road connection" zot will appear. Unzone the now-empty landfill, and save your city. Voila, landfill gone.
4. Save frequent copies of city files, date-stamped with the in-game date and perhaps a comment ("City - Elmwood - 2017-07-04 - Before Building Highway.sc4"). That way, if something goes wrong that's irreparable (immortal lots, immortal landfills, time-bomb-zombie squares, irreconcilable edges, etc), you can "revert to earlier state" without loosing too much progress.

[CorinaMarie 29,876]

I've only had one incident with the landfill and the eraser mod worked for me. In my research I learned (but don't remember the specific details) that there are situations where nothing at all works. In those cases reverting to a previous incremental save is the only option like you did. In my own tests I've found I can zone any size land fill greater than 2x2 and not have a problem. I can even dezone sections of it and as long as no part is less than 2x2 I can create any shape I want.

[Bigridge 3]

I HAVE FOUND THE CURE !

All you need to do is totally defund the sanitation department in the utilities expenditure panel. Give it 0 budget. Run the game for a little while then go back and then give it all the funds. The glitch will reset and the zone will behave properly again. You will still need to use a waste to energy plant to get rid of the trash but this works ! 
 

It's A Pleasure  

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

Hi @Bigridge and welcome to Simtropolis.

Just to say even though this topic hasn't seen a reply for almost 4 years, it's very thoughtful how you've decided to post and share the solution. Many older topics receive regular views from those who frequent the site as guests. So similarly to the posts above, this will likely help people other than the OP as well.

Thanks for sharing the insights from your own experience.

[SIM-ple Jack 17,450]

Actually, there's a mod that does all that in no time. There's also about a half dozen space-saving trash eradicators floating around which make dump zoning obsolete.