Element #6 is Carbon.
We probably all first met Carbon as that black stuff inside our fat red kindergarten pencils (no, it’s not Lead!). That’s graphite, one of the natural forms of Carbon. Several years later, we probably met Carbon again in its more glamorous form--diamond. Somewhere in between, while studying photosynthesis in science class, we learned that animals breathe in Oxygen and breathe out Carbon Dioxide, and plants do the opposite, and it all balances out in a big happy Carbon Cycle (except when too much carbon that has been stored underground for millions of years is burned in a short time, but that’s too complex an issue for a cache page.)
Beneath the cache is a large man-made depository of Carbon, plus probably lots of Iron, Lead, Silicon, Copper, Zinc, Spam, etc.--in other words, a landfill. The landfill was closed in the early 1980s, capped off, and turned into Bayfront Park. But the landfill is still there, its organic (carbon-containing) components slowly rotting away and turning into a different form of carbon—methane, i.e., natural gas.
Pipes laid down in the landfill collect this methane and carry it to a small generating plant just over the hill from the cache on the bay side of the park. This plant has the potential to generate almost 15,000 Megawatt-hours of electricity a year, enough to power over 1500 homes. (I don’t know if it’s living up to its potential.) Burning this methane creates carbon dioxide which plants need to grow. These plants could end up in some other landfill, thus completing a different kind of Carbon Cycle.
The cache is located about 3 feet off a small trail. It is best if you approach the cache from the west side. Please be sure that the cache is replaced so it is not visible to folks passing by. The cache is a camouflaged medium-sized plastic jar. The original container was a pre-fab cache that I picked up at Little Shop of Horrors III, courtesy of Marky & Joanie (thanks, M&J!)
Bayfront Park is open from 7:00 am to a half-hour after sunset. There are several other caches in this park. In fact, the first cache I ever found Day at the Dump was once the closest cache to this one. Unfortunately, it's now gone.