The top of every landfill should be rounded, and certainly never a flat plateau, and if your landfill has a flat plateau you should go right now to the regulators and the planners and ask for more capacity to be allowed to ask for a rounded contour with surface slopes initially at no shallower than 1 in 20, whcih after settlement will end up probably at only 1 in 20 which is only just enough to stop sighnificant ponding. In essence you need the surface water from a landfill cap to flo off it quickly. UK research in the 1990s showed this need for a good shedding slope to the top of a landfill to reduce leachate production, to be a big factor in all cases studied.
Here is an extract from the original article:
TRENT HILLS -- The key to a landfill achieving its full potential is that it be well-rounded. Northumberland County will be making that argument when it applies to the Ministry of the Environment to increase the capacity of the Seymour landfill by 39,000 cubic metres so the mound atop the waste disposal site will be rounded.
The landfill's approved final contours is for a plateau on top which will lead to increased infiltration of precipitation into the landfill and cause "higher than necessary leachate generation rates," manager of planning and technical support Adam McCue said in a report to County council April 18.
If the ministry agrees to the request for additional waste material and cover soil, Seymour Landfill's operating life would be extended by up to two years, he said.
With its capacity currently valued at $95 per tonne, the landfill would produce an additional $1.85 million in revenue during that time, he added.
Mo Pannu, director of transportation and waste management, said the site's capacity is expected to run out by the end of this year or early in 2013.
He said it will take four to five months for the application to be processed.
The application to the ministry will cost $22,700. The County also approved an expenditure of $42,500 to develop detailed design, operations and closure plan in support of the request. Both expenses will be funded from savings in this year's transportation and waste management department budgets.
There have been fewer dramatic US nationally funded clean-up up projects in recent years, since more attention has been given to regulating landfills and the operators have been made to line them and show that proper care is being taken to protect the environment from the damage that leachate escape can cause. The following article shows a case where action is being taken to protect water supplies:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced that it has entered into an agreement with the General Electric Company and SI Group, Inc. (formerly Schenectady Chemical) to collect and properly dispose of contaminated ground water and liquid leaching from the Dewey Loeffel landfill that is threatening several nearby drinking water wells. The liquid seeping from the landfill, called leachate, and the ground water are contaminated with volatile organic compounds, which can cause cancer in people. The extent and nature of potential health effects depend on many factors, including the level and how long people are exposed to the contaminants.
The EPA is currently collecting the contaminated liquid waste and sending it off-site for disposal. Under the agreement, General Electric and SI will take on the collection and removal of the waste and the construction of a treatment plant adjacent to the landfill, all with EPA oversight. The waste will continue to be sent off-site until the construction of the treatment plant is completed. Treated water from the new system will be discharged to surface water only after the EPA verifies that sampling data shows that the treatment system is working effectively and is capable of meeting stringent state discharge limits. GE and SI Group have agreed to reimburse EPA for certain costs, including an upfront payment of $800,000.
“The EPA has determined that treating the contaminated ground water and liquid at the site is an effective way to protect people’s drinking water wells while the EPA investigation of the site continues,” said Judith A. Enck, EPA Regional Administrator. “The treatment system that will be constructed near the landfill will alleviate the impacts of the hundreds of truck trips needed to dispose of the waste off-site.”
The treatment system to be constructed will address potential threats from the contaminated ground water and eachate and community concerns about trucking the contaminated liquid off-site. A comprehensive long-term study is underway, which will identify permanent cleanup options, called remedial actions, for the contaminated ground water, surface water and sediment associated with the site. The permanent cleanup plan may include changes to the leachate collection collection, ground water extraction and treatment systems.
The Dewey Loeffel Landfill site is located in southern Rensselaer County, approximately four miles northeast of the village of Nassau. From 1952 until 1968, the site was used for the disposal of an estimated 46,000 tons of waste materials generated by several Capital District companies. The waste included industrial solvents, waste oils, polychlorinated biphenyls, scrap materials, sludge and solids. Volatile organic compounds and other hazardous substances have seeped out of the landfill and contaminated the ground water. PCBs have also moved downstream, causing contamination of sediment and several species of fish in and near Nassau Lake.
From 1980 until the site was added to the federal Superfund list in May 2011, numerous investigations and cleanup actions were performed at the site under the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s Superfund program. In the fall 2011, the EPA took responsibility for operating ground water and leachate collection collection systems that had been installed by the state.
The importance of avoiding landfill leachate escapes to landfill operators is once again made clear in this article which we found recently, where the problem is all about the release of leachate into the nearby creek. It shows, yet again, how important it is to ensure that leachate is managed carefully. Which means that the city’s municipal solid waste landfill may be closed to new waste tipping, but it’s far from being off the local radar screen.
Here is an extract from the article:
The Florence City Council could vote tonight to pay its engineering consultant $21,130 to investigate the source of a leachate escape in February that ultimately led to the state issuing a notice of violation.
The contract with Highland Technical Services would also authorize the company to take steps to recover leachate — water polluted with garbage — from the cell from which it originally escaped. If that option is chosen, the cost will increase to $55,640.
The council voted recently to close the landfill to municipal solid waste, leaving the remaining space for construction and demolition debris. The landfill was running out space, and the council deadlocked for months on whether to open a final cell or close the landfill and hire a contractor to haul trash out of state. The latter option was chosen as a temporary emergency measure in December because the current cell filled in early January.
In March, the council voted to extend its contract with Waste Connections, which is operating a transfer station for the city.
The notice of violation from the Alabama Department of Environmental Management cited the release of leachate into nearby Cypress Creek during a rain event. The violation is considered serious, and the notice stated a monetary fine could be imposed.
The council’s 3-3 deadlock was broken when Councilman Sam Pendleton and Council President James Barnhart voted to extend the contract with Waste Connections. Pendleton said the violation convinced him the landfill has problems. Barnhart, who had been concerned with costs, said Waste Connections’ guarantee of a long-term steady price helped sway his decision.
Here is an open letter from a resident who is appears to be declaring that leachate from a municipal waste landfill which the Waste Water Treatment Plant operator is presumably happy to accept, which must surely mean that there is sufficient treatment capacity at the Waste Water Treatment Plant to treat it, should not be sent there.
(The video below is for your general information and not associated with this article.)
This seems quite remarkable when around the worl the majority of landfill leachate is treated at sewage works, and for example the World Bank often prefers that it be treated finally at a Waste Water Treatment Plant, that this objection should be being made. Of course, the leachate might contain toxic substances, apart from the usual high strength organic contamination which is always present in landfill leachate. It also might well contain dissolved methane which might make it an explosion risk to discharge into the sewer, and need methane stripping before it is discharges, or, it might actually be more cost effectively provided with initial leachate treatment plant at the landfill site, by installation of a nitrification treatment plant, of which i have designed and supervisied construction of many.
However, just to say this is horrible suff this landfill leachate and must not go to the sewer or the Waste Water Treatment Plant by tankers, is likely to place a high and unnecessary burden of cost on the community, for little environmental benefit, if any. You can read the opern letter below. Please also visit the original blog article:
Dear Officials (town and city of Geneva):
The residents of the Town and City of Geneva and the Town of Seneca are bearing most of the burden of the off-site environmental problems coming from the Ontario County landfill. These residents are becoming more cynical about the ability and the willingness of some local officials to stand up and represent their constituents, as opposed to the interests of Casella Waste. Because of that, it seems like a good time to state an important concern about pending sewer negotiations.
Any final agreement must contain safeguards against Casella ever being able to transport leachate from the landfill through any jointly owned/operated sewer line to the Geneva Waste Water Treatment Plant, which discharges into Seneca Lake. Although this battle was fought months ago, that was not a final victory for Seneca Lake and those who drink its water, since leachate is still being trucked to the waste water treatment plant. The appetite of some local officials for leachat dollars apparently is never satisfied. City Council’s courageous decision against a direct pipeline from the dump to the treatment plant must be confirmed for the future in any city-town agreement about sewers.
In keeping with this decision and the concerns of residents, it is essential that any sewer agreements between the Town of Geneva and the Town of Seneca, and between the City of Geneva and the Town of Geneva include specific language preventing Casella or any future operator of the landfill from transporting leachate through city and town sewer lines.
There is no doubt that leachate can be very strog and cause a risk of surface water pollution, fish kils, etc. even where composting is taking place, and controls on where such compost piles are located may be needed. Here is a case where this has been seen as being vitally important.
Please vist the original website by clicking the link at the bottom of the article:
HELEN MURDOCH: A breach in a clay bund wall surrounding an illegal pile of rotting chicken and bark near the Motueka River has raised questions about the waste leaking into groundwater.
The Nelson Mail returned to the site on Thursday and found an overgrown drain from the compost site used by Birdhurst Ltd led directly to a nearby well liner sunk into the ground.
On Tuesday the Tasman District Council's environmental information manager Rob Smith had said that the illegal pile of rotting layer hens and bark would be allowed to remain at the site for the next month until the compost process was complete because moving the heaps before the process was complete would create too much smell.
At the time Mr Smith said the piles were in a compacted clay pit and there was no chance of contamination entering the groundwater – which ran between 2.5 to 3.5 metres below the surface – or reaching the Motueka River, some 200m away.
The situation came to public attention late last month when the Mail was called to the site off the end of Parker St because of concerns over the smell from the estimated 300 cubic metres of rotting chickens and bark.
The company was then fined $750 for breaching an abatement order issued by the council last year requiring Birdhurst to halt the operation.
Mr Smith said on Thursday staff were aware of the slot in the bund. It was to be blocked up on Thursday evening and more bark added to the pile of rotting chickens to reduce the smell.
"We believe that it was part of the previous consent requirement to manage the leachate. The previous consent had leachate management provisions in it. The composting material is isolated from the slot by clean bark and shell material.
"While I do not believe that there is any need to worry about any potential discharge to groundwater we will sample the groundwater next week to put the public's mind at rest."
Mr Smith said staff were following up on the issue of the unconsented compost operation occurring on the site that breaches the volume and odour regulations.
The phrasing of this article is quite surprising. Elsewhere it has long been recognised that leachate can, if it gets into water supplies, be a major hazard to human health. In any landfill in other than a desert environment there is always enough leachate to jeopardise aquifers and watercourses if these are present in the local geology, and once in an aquifer the leachate may then migrate to be drawn into public water supply wells.
(Please note that the video below is included to point out the hazardous nature of leachate, and is not connected with the article.)
Throughout the EU this has been recognised for nearly 30 years now, since the Council passed a law (Directive) on all EU nations that as a matter of principle makes it illegal to pollute any uderground water, whether used for public extraction wells or not. The journalist who wrote this article is clearly not aware of these facts, howecer, it is good that the dangers of leachate to public health are being treated seriously in Ohio, and the authorities are acting on behalf of the people to ensure they are kept safe. Please read the original article, not just our excerpt below, but follwing the link at the bottom:
The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency proposed rule changes for construction and demolition debris landfills, which could mean more protection for Ohio's groundwater but higher operating costs for some landfills in the Mahoning Valley.
According to officials at the Ohio EPA, acting on a request by Ohio legislators, the agency conducted a leachate study and determined that leachate from Ohio CDD landfills could pose a threat to public health and the environment if it were to be released to groundwater or surface water.
''What we've done is added some provisions for making sure that doesn't happen,'' said Linda Fee Oros, spokeswoman with the Ohio EPA.
If adopted, those new restrictions could apply to two licensed CDD landfills in Trumbull County, Total Waste Logistics LAS LLC in Girard and the Lafarge-owned Lordstown Construction Recovery in Lordstown.
A CDD landfill differs from other types of landfills, including municipal landfills, in that it can only take materials from buildings, said Linda Fee Oros, spokeswoman with the Ohio EPA.
But Tim Page, general manager of Lordstown Construction Recovery, said he does not believe increased regulations on landfill leachate will not hinder operations there.
''Our leachate is not circulated. It's all treated and hooked up to the sewers and sent through the sewers,'' he said.
Page said his company is in discussions with the Ohio EPA regarding the proposed changes, but that they are very early in the process and that nothing has been decided.
Another area being discussed is in the increase in financial assurance required to be paid when licenses are issued each year.
''What they are asking for is more dollars per acre to be spent because the cost of closure has increased over the past few years,'' Page said. ''The materials you bring on site, the fuels and machinery, has gone up. So, there's definitely a need for an increase there of some sort.''
Not unlike other businesses, these types of landfills can be affected by the economy, which could cause them to close. If the business is unable to pay to properly close, the responsibility is then burdened on the state.
''You may have hard financial times and need to close. If the business doesn't generate enough money to pay for those costs, that would be a financial impact,'' Page said.
CDD landfills can only accept debris from construction and demolition activities; packaging resulting from the use of construction materials where the packaging is incidental to the load; tree stumps, trunks and branches exceeding 4 inches in diameter where the branches are clean of leaves and small branches; and asbestos-containing materials as long as a NESHAP air permit has been granted.
A CDD landfill is required to keep records of accepted and rejected waste loads, activities and the working face, preventing fires, proper management of surface water and leachate and prevention of nuisances or health hazards.
They are also required to monitor ground water if the facility is located near wells or an aquifer.
The process to have the proposed changes becoming rules is still in its early stages and the Ohio EPA is working to fine tune their proposals.
''At this point, we are looking at the comments we received and are working to incorporate those into our rules if changes are needed,'' Oros said.
A hearing will be held with Ohio's Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review regarding the possible rule changes. No date has yet been set for the hearing.
