Residents oppose Guatali landfill - Pacific Daily News

We quote from a news item below which is about a landfill from which leachate will be trucked out to a sewage wroks for treatment. In most coases this is more expensive than buidling a leachate treatment plant on-site (see the leachate treatment website, and the fact is that these won't be the same vehicles  either. Leachate has to be transported in tanker vehicles and the waste come in in waste collection vehicles, and bulk waste trucks!

Read the following quote and you'll understand what I am saying:

Guam's new landfill hums along in Inarajan, but a plan to build a smaller landfill with a waste-to-energy incinerator continues in Santa Rita despite objections from nearby residents.

Nearly 100 people attended a passionate public hearing last night, most objecting to plans for the Guatali Municipal Solid Waste Landfill.

"We don't really need another landfill right now," said Debora Moore. "We already have a brand-new landfill. ... I'm against it and I felt like I should speak out against it."

It was short, simple criticism, but Santa Rita residents clapped and cheered when she finished. It was like that for most of the evening's testimony.

Last night's hearing was held by the Guam Environmental Protection Agency to collect comments. The agency is considering issuing a permit for Guatali landfill plans. The deadline to submit testimony is Friday.

The company behind the project is Guam Resource Recovery Partners, which plans to stockpile waste on leased GovGuam land, then start incinerating the garbage to make energy, according to an impact assessment of the project.

If Guam EPA issues a permit, the Guatali facility will be built on an 87-acre land parcel in Santa Rita, just north of Apra Heights and uphill from the Atantano River, the impact assessment states. About 22 acres of savannah would become waste storage cells, bracketed by small wetlands to the east and west, the assessment states.

The waste stored in the cells is expected to generate about 36,000 gallons of leachate daily. Some will be absorbed by filtering the leachate back through the landfill; the rest would be trucked to the wastewater treatment plant in Hag't'a, the impact assessment states.

That's how the landfill would work, trucking garbage in and trucking leachate out, for the first three to five years, by which time Guam Resource Recovery Partners hopes to have its waste-to-energy incinerator running.

The company's incinerator efforts have been wrapped up in a court battle for about a decade. If Guam Resource Recovery Partners ever gets approval for the facility, it would run for 11 months a year, the assessment states......

....The impact assessment states repeatedly the Guatali landfill is needed to close the Ordot dump, which will improve quality of life on Guam. The document was last revised in January, so it doesn't reflect that the Ordot dump has been closed for almost three months.

That begs the same question that surfaced at the Santa Rita hearing: Does Guam need two landfills?

When asked yesterday about the justification for a second landfill, Guirguis said the island didn't need two landfills. However, Guirguis insists the Guatali proposal -- not the finished landfill in Inarajan --is better for Guam.

Guirguis said the Inarajan landfill will reach its 50-year life expectancy only if GovGuam continues to build more storage cells, expanding the landfill footprint. In contrast, once the Guatali facility starts incinerating waste, it won't need to expand its landfill component, Guirguis said.

Guirguis said the Guatali landfill also is preferable because it will be cheaper than the government landfill. Tipping fees already have been increased.

View the original article here

Water Quality Violations Cost Long Prairie Packing Co. $52000 - Water World

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency issued the following news release seems surprising. If, as seems to be being suggested in this news release the perpetrator was breaking the envirnomental law, these people are environmental criminals, so why was there an agreement when this should have gone to court? In such cases the litigant should pay all the costs and not the state, so what possible reason can these be for this?

Am I being too Machiavellian by noting that actually there was a reason for Long Prairie Packing to come to an agreement as they want to develop an AD Plant:

Long Prairie Packing Co., LLC, and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) recently reached an agreement that requires the company to pay $52,000 for alleged water quality violations. The violations occurred between fall 2009 and spring 2010 at the company's facility in Long Prairie, Minn.

According to MPCA staff inspection reports, the company improperly stockpiled and land applied industrial byproducts, and failed to maintain a required 600-foot land application setback from surface waters at seven sites. Some of the land applications occurred within farmed wetlands. The company also failed to notify the MPCA or immediately recover blood-contaminated leachate which spilled out of a dumpster and a large storage tote; improperly stored more than 500 gallons of used oil; and operated parts of the facility without a required federal and state industrial stormwater permit.

Of the $52,000 civil penalty, half will be paid to the MPCA, and half will be spent on completing a supplemental environmental project. Long Prairie Packing Co. plans to construct an industrial anaerobic digester near the plant that will reduce the amount and toxicity of pollutants entering area waters, and significantly reduce the land application of industrial byproducts. The digester will produce biogas, which will help reduce dependency on coal-powered energy sources. The company has also completed a series of required corrective actions.

View the original article here

Leachate Odor Causes Tempers to Flare at Clean Harbors Meeting

Leachate odor can be extremely unpleasant. It can actually get into your clothes and even days later be smelled in them. That's why we have every sympathy for the complainants in this case. Here is a quote from the article recently published:

BRIGDEN — A public meeting on Nov. 15 that was meant to reassure neighbors of Clean Harbors's hazardous waste site was reduced at times to a shouting match. About a dozen of the 50 in attendance stormed out of the Brigden Fair exhibition hall in frustration.


(The above video is not connected to the article other than the fact that it attests to the odor potential of leachate.)
"We've listened to your dog and pony show. Now it's time to listen to us," yelled an angry Butch Houle.
He and many other neighbours of the Telfer Road facility have been disturbed by a stench intermittently coming from Clean Harbors since August.
The odour, which the company says comes from too much on site eachate, has driven neighbours from their homes, made them nauseous, stung their eyes and sent at least one man to hospital.
"When the ministry (of environment) ordered two truckloads removed from the site every day, why wasn't that achieved?" Norm O'Neill demanded. "It's all a smoke and mirrors game."
"We are not being heard. Our concerns are not being addressed," said Joe Dickenson, a Lambton County beef farmer.
"I think a lot of this issue is airborne, not necessarily leachate; but all you do is focus on leachate because it might be the easiest thing to address."
Many people called for the plant to shut down.
"I'd like you to clean up your mess and go home," one man shouted.
For most of the two-hour meeting, Clean Harbors's management sat quietly at the back of the room.
General manager Chris Brown spoke briefly, apologizing for the stench and promising the company is working to correct it.
"The company is committed to fixing this issue," he said. "We deeply regret this summer's odours."
Rod Brooks, a representative from Ortech Environmental, spoke about air sampling on 10 occasions during odour events.
The air is tested for 38 Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs)and none surpass regulatory standards, he said.
Greg Ferrar, senior environmental engineer with Conestoga Rovers & Associates, said his company is hired to devise a leachate abatement plan and focused on reducing the amount of leachate generated as well as reducing the amount already on-site through incineration.
But most of the meeting was conducted by a hired facilitator, Bryan Boyle, who allowed few to speak. Instead, he tried to engage the angry group by having them write down their thoughts about Clean Harbors and what they believe the solution to the stench might be.
Many in the crowd didn't want to write anything down.
"Forget this Romper Room nonsense," said Jim Stenton of Petrolia Line. "We want answers because we're stunk out of our homes.
"You're wasting our time," he hollered."
One resident walked up to the front of the hall and stuck a note on the wall that read: "As usual, all talk, no action."
"I want people from Clean Harbors to hear the emotion that I hear and I want them to come up and tell us what they are going to do," said St. Clair Township Mayor Steve Arnold.
It was only after several got up and left in anger, that the company's senior vice-president of regulatory affairs spoke.
Phil Retallick said exhaustive studies confirm the odour is coming from leachate, not the plant's incinerator or a new Thermal Desorption Unit.
"It's sulfites in the leachate and it doesn't contain carcinogens or other toxic compounds," Retallick said.
"There are no compounds of any risk associated with the vapours, but it is a nuisance and we will deal with that. Our experts say it will take four to six months depending on the rainfall this winter."
Retallick said Clean Harbors has no choice but to reduce its on-site leachate by May because of a directive from the Ministry of Environment.
There will be further public meetings about odour abatement, he said.

View the original article here

Avoiding Over Reliance on the Hydrologic Evaluation of Landfill Performance (HELP) Computer Program

We have published an article on our main leachate web site about predictive modelling of leachate generation volumes. Unfortunatly, the best calculations done in this way are looked upon as the best acheivable, but have on many occasions not been as accurate as anticipated or needed. Go see our article by following the link below if you would like to find out why we think this is occurring.

Avoiding Over Reliance on the Hydrologic Evaluation of Landfill Performance (HELP) Computer Program

Lagoon Treatment of Leachate Added by Bi-County Solid Waste Management

Bi-County Solid Waste Management expects to save up to $20,000 each month with the help of its latest step toward self-sufficiency.

The Montgomery County landfill's executive director, Pete Reed, said the majority of leachate, or contaminated water, on the site will eventually be treated in the lagoon that began holding water after the May 2010 flood that shut down Clarksville's wastewater treatment plant.

"They had to put a permit on us and start charging us $9,000 to 10,000 a month, but if we had a parameter that goes above, then we had ... surcharges that could be an additional $15,000 in that month," said Reed, who added that the landfill went above that parameter 2-3 times a year.

As those costs started to build, along with the high costs of hauling the leachate off the site, Reed said the decision was made to create a $750,000 system featuring the lagoon that holds 1.3 million gallons and will be able to decontaminate the water over a 30-day period.

Three separate pools hold the water that is pumped in from various locations throughout the site. The two pools with a white foam layer on top are anoxic zones, meaning aerators pump in oxygen, while the middle pool is anaerobic, with a pump that puts in a different mixture of chemicals.

Beginning in May of this year, Reed said micro-organisms that are trained to eat ammonia and other chemicals were added to help treat the water by releasing the nitrates and taking out any odor. Although Reed said the pools have reached the optimal amount of the "bugs" that come from Paris, Tenn., it will still be a few months before the system is fully operational.

Reed said the lagoon has already ensured the landfill won't go beyond its monthly parameters at the wastewater treatment plant, and eventually the treated water will overflow into a clarifier that will filter out the sludge and transport the clean water to a 7 million gallon holding pond adjacent to the lagoon. That water will be used for irrigation on the grass at the site, as well as the nearby woods and, if it's clean enough, into local streams.

Depending on the season, Reed said the system could put out about a million gallons each month. Before it can be used for irrigation or anything else, several samples of the water will have to be approved by the state.

Even with the new system, some leachate will still go to the wastewater treatment plant, but the cost of the permit and the manpower required will be reduced significantly. Reed said he doesn't expect the loss of income from the landfill to have much effect on the plant's bottom line, since it's expanding and gets plenty of money from industrial sources.

"We hope that by this time next year, we'll be pretty much self-contained," Reed said. "Nothing will have to go out, other than (recyclables)."

View the original article here

Landfill and Groundwater Contamination

Approximately 100 million tonnes of waste are disposed of each year (comprising Municipal Solid Waste and Industrial/ Commercial Wastes) at the many licensed landfill sites operating in England and Wales. However space for landfilling at these locations is due to run out in the very near future, so many people need to be told about them, so that new landfills can be planned. It will always be necessary to have some landfills. Although zero waste is a great aspirational target, at some point before zero, the law of diminishing returns will always set in, and the energy used apart from the cost of avoiding that last few percent of waste, will always make zero waste an unachievable target.

When rainfall soaks into waste in a garbage tip it slowly drains through the waste under gravity. As it does so it picks up soluble contaminants from the waste itself. This produces a very strongly organically contaminated liquid which is called leachate. Most of the contamination is biological (organic) in nature, but whatever soluble contaminants are present in the landfill, the leachate will probably also contain them in small quantities. The leachate will also have dissolved methane in it if it comes from a gassing (biogas producing or âmethanogenicâ) landfill.

If there is no base lining the leachate will drain away through any reasonably permeable material which exists under the landfill. Although this material below the landfill may do some filtering and further cleansing of the leachate, it can enter the underground strata still in a highly polluting condition. Water flowing in subterranean rock, through cracks and fissures and through any permeable material is called groundwater.

In many parts of the developed ad developing world this groundwater will be used for drinking and cooking. It will obviously be dangerous to human health for people to imbibe this flow. This will happen if and when pumped out for use from contaminated strata, or where the groundwater emerges at the surface.

Groundwater moves slowly and continuously through the open spaces in soil and rock. If a landfill contaminates groundwater, a plume of contamination will occur wherever reasonably permeable material exists below, for example a private property plot.

Any groundwater which gets polluted will still keep flowing underground and although the ground may help to naturally filter and biologically treat the leachate, eventually the pollution flow may grow and the small extent of a polluted area shown initially may later have to be extended if a growing contaminant plume develops, and nearby water resources including water supply boreholes can be contaminated. If they do they will probably remain unusable for several generations. Such a loss of something as precious as water is a terrible problem for later generations.

So, is it any wonder that environmental activists dislike landfills not only because of the potential for pollution just described, however, the more astute among them also dislike landfilling because landfills permanently remove large quantities of raw materials from economic use.

All of the energy and natural resources (such as water) that were used to process the items "wasted" are also not conserved.

Environmental Protection Agencies in many countries generally rely on the laws in their states to enforce their own operating permits and federal laws. If state agencies are not aggressive, violations can worsen, multiplying negative environmental impacts exponentially. Environmental pollution of land, air, and water created by the world's poorly-managed landfills is enormous.

In the early 21st century, alternative methods to waste disposal have been devised, including recycling, converting to biodegradable products, incineration and cogeneration facilities, and sustainable development, all of which assist in reducing global landfill pollution.

Steve Evans is an authority on landfill liabilities and Global Warming effects visit any one of the product and resource links we give here and you will not be disappointed. Landfill Problems and Global Warming Effects are just two of many issues on which we comment, plus educational and general information available free, if you visit the Landfilling Site web site.