Leachate Collection and Treatment Facility Gets City Landfill Site and Student Thesis

Locals will be pleased abut new invetsment in environmental protection measures at the Merrick landfill site, as in the quotation which follows:

NORTH BAY, US - Engineering plans for a leachate collection and treatment facility at the city's Merrick landfill are ready to be drafted after council approved a $1.7 million expenditure during its March 5 meeting.

"Once completed, these plans will be presented to the Ministry of Environment for comment. We expect that to be completed by the end of the summer and hope to be able to tender out the construction of the project by late fall," said North Bay's manager of environmental services John Severino.

It is expected the leachate treatment facility will be operational by the spring of 2014.

The leachate treatment system has been designed by Conestoga Rovers and Associates, with input from Queen's University students who have been actively studying the city's landfill site and estimating future waste management needs.

"We actually have students at Queen's doing their thesis on our site," said City engineer Alan Korell, "and the National Research Council has put money in as well."

Total costs of this project have been budgeted at $5 million, money well spent according to Korell. He says the landfill site, "is the city's biggest opportunity to make a positive impact on the environment."

Severino says the system the city has chosen allows for the treatment of the liquid seepage so it can be directly returned to the environment. "It is also a flexible system in order to address any future concerns and is part of the whole Green Plan for the city."

The Merrick landfill, opened in 1994 with a footprint of 40.5 acres and has a life expectancy of 20 more years. Divided into 10 cells, "the first cells were naturally attenuated," said Severino, "where the leachate was allowed to run into the ground and be naturally treated. When we opened cell five, we put down a clay liner to collect the leachate, and have done the same with cell six, recently opened."

The treatment project is a complement to the methane collection system already part of the landfill operations.

"Currently we are collecting and flaring the methane gas. This system has only a one-twentieth impact on the environment compared to the natural process," said Severino. "Once the cogeneration plant is operational, the methane will not only produce energy for the area but will also be used to heat and help facilitate the leachate treatment system."

North Bay's energy from gas project, is the first to receive approval under the province's new Green Energy Act and is targeted to start production the end of June. The cost of this initiative was also $5 million.

"At peak capacity the plant should generate 1.6 megawatts of electricity," said Korell. "Enough to supply many of the homes in the area and stabilize that end of the city. It's about the equivalent of 1,300 homes."

The cogeneration plant will offset about 45,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually.

North Bay Hydro received approval for the renewable energy project in June 2011.

"Our philosophy, when it comes to the landfill site, is to limit what's going in there, and to optimize what's going on," Korell said.

Korell and Severino are excited about the city's approach to waste management, and are already eyeing starting the expansion planning process in about 10 years in order to have everything in place at the end of the current certification period. They both feel the city is, "ahead of the game in Northern Ontario," and they want to see it stay in the environmental lead.

"We are already diverting as much as 40 per cent of our waste, through recycling," said Korell, " and we're working to make the current landfill site last as long as possible.

"We're also fortunate that the city owns lots of land where the site is now, so we'll be able to expand, rather than have to look for a new location."

As the first such site approved to produce biogas, "we've sort of been the provincial guinea pig," said Severino. "MOE has been using us as a demonstration site and bringing people to show them what a well managed landfill is like."

Mayor Al McDonald says the landfill site initiatives are part of council's commitment to the environment and to future generations.

"These projects see over $10 million invested at the Merrick landfill site," he said, " to ensure the City's future needs are satisfied in an environmentally responsible way."

View the original article here

New EPA Leachate Monitoring Rules Affect Local Landfills

New landfill rules will mean increased costs for old landfills in the US County, and include, five key areas, for a post-closure care period, post-closure care financial assurance, more post-closure care period imonitoring if there are judged to be health or environmental effects, and a procedure to adjust final closure financial assurance.

The full details are given from the Zanesville Post article which descrobes them, below. Please visit the original site:

ZANESVILLE -- The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency has proposed new rules that would require the state's licensed construction and demolition debris landfills to regularly test groundwater for an expanded number of contaminants.

Two of the state's 55 licensed landfills which would be subject to the new rules are local -- Sidwell Materials' site off of Limestone Valley Road in Newton Township and the County Road 286 landfill in Coshocton County.

Sidwell Materials Asbestos Hazard Evaluation Specialist Drake Prouty said the company will abide by whatever rules and regulations ultimately are set forth by the agency.

He said that EPA representatives visit the landfill at 4620 Limestone Valley Road quarterly and for unannounced spot testing of groundwater at the 9-acre site, and no problems have been found.

A legislative study committee and the EPA proposed tougher regulations regarding water monitoring or leachate at the bottom of landfill sites in 2005, but backed off after officials complained the new regulations would be too expensive to comply with.

That proposal would have allowed for 64 different toxic chemicals to be tested for, instead of the 19 currently required by the EPA. The new proposal expands that number to 77 pollutants which could "leach" in to groundwater supplies, including iron, sulfate, manganese and even toxic adhesives.

Based on the prior study which determined lthat landfill leachate poses a threat to public health and the environment if released to ground water or surface water, and public comments received on the draft rules issued earlier this year, Ohio EPA developed the current proposed rules.

The amended proposed rules focus on five key areas:

- Five-year post-closure care period.

- Post-closure care financial assurance provided by the facility.

- Extension of post-closure care period if there are health or environmental effects.

- A procedure to adjust final closure financial assurance with the issuance of an annual license.

- Monitor landfill eachate at the bottom of the landfill for an established list of contaminants, and if detected, monitor ground water for the detected contaminant.

View the original article here

Anaerobic Digestion News: Biogas from Anaerobic Digestion Can Help Save Our ...

Anaerobic Digestion News: Biogas from Anaerobic Digestion Can Help Save Our ...: Our Angry Dragon cartoon below is intended to be funny and provokes thought about why biogas from anaerobic digestion can help save our pla...

Odour Killing Solution From St Clair, Clean Harbors is a Dangerous Idea

While we are sure that everyone has great sympathy with the locals in St. Clair, who should not have to suffer this odor for one more day, as an experienced leachate treatment engineer it concerns me to read about the solution being adopted. Covering these foul smelling lagoons, which contain a, no doubt, high level of organic contamination is a dangerous route to take. The largely anaerobic leachate which probably over time have also developed an organic sludge below the water which is also anaerobic, will be generating biogas. In fact there are many examples of anaerobic digestion (biogas) plants built on purpose using acetogenic organic wastes in a comparable manner to this.

So, please take care about going down the route of covering leachate lagoons and providing almost no ventilation. If you do, take care to observe good explosion risk assessments (in the EU the ATEX Directive applies) and implement goode safety procedures on-site. In the past it has been seen as a much better idea to dose the leachate as it enters the lagoons with an oxidising agent such as hydrogen peroxide, or even potassium permangenate. Once in an aerobic condition throughout, no more methane will be generated, and the operator could then commence aeration of these lagoons, but aeration into anaerobic conditions at first would just make the odor more pronounced. (If you need expert help on solving leachate odor problems contact us at www.leachate.co.uk .) The article extarct follows. Please visit the link at the bottom of this page to see the original page:

ST. CLAIR  TOWNSHIP - Clean Harbors has spent nearly $1 million on corrective action since last August when an overwhelming stench began impacting neighbours of the hazardous waste facility.

"The sheer volume of exposed leachate couldn't be addressed by snapping our fingers," said the company's compliance director.

Mike Parker, a handful of consultants, and Clean Harbors' managers, spoke to about 35 residents Wednesday at an open house at the Royal Canadian Legion in Corunna, assuring them that months of sickening odour incidents will soon be over.

While some neighbours disagree, company brass are confident the stink is a result of too much leachate at the Telfer Road site.

Since August, Clean Harbors has incinerated approximately 20 million litres of leachate and emptied one of its holding ponds.

By late February, the company expects to completely cover its two leachate ponds with engineered roofs and will easily meet the deadlines directed by the Ministry of Environment, Parker said.

The ministry has ordered Clean Harbors to address its odour issue and reduce the volume of on-site leachate by May.

"We're doing a lot of work that will ultimately reduce the leachate,"

Parker said. "We're doing everything possible to be sure the odour is gone. I'm very confident the major source will be eliminated by May.

"We wouldn't do all this and spent this kind of money if it wasn't going to be affective," he said.

But neighbours at Wednesday's open house weren't so confident.

The odours have impacted their quality of life, made them nauseous, stung their eyes and sent them to emergency.

"You are interfering with my enjoyment of my property," Jim Stenton of Petrolia Line told Clean Harbors' general manager Jim Brown.

Stenton asked Brown why the company doesn't put out a warning through the community warning system known as CVECO when odours are bad.

"It would be better if I had warning so I could get out of my house,"

Stenton said.

"For an odour complaint?" Brown answered. "I don't see it that way."

But, Clean Harbors does alert the Ministry of Environment, he added.

"And once the leachate is under the cover, it will eliminate that septic smell," Brown said. "You'll never get rid of all the odours completely but the really bad smell should be gone."

Clean Harbors has applied for ministry approval to vent the engineered roofs, a move that the neighbours oppose.

"I think everyone is pretty upset about it," said Lori Vokes who represents about 100 area residents.

"They said they were installing airtight covers and now they want to vent them."

The public has until Feb. 12 to comment on Clean Harbors' application to vent.

"We hope enough people will object to make the ministry take a closer look at the application and not just rubber stamp it," said Vokes.

The application can be viewed at www.ebr.gov.on.ca and is number 011 5467.

If approved, each leachate pond will have one vent measuring two inches in diameter, said Parker.

"We'll use it two or three times a week for three to five minutes at a time. If there's a bad odour, we'll shut the valve," he said.

The vents are necessary to release any trapped air under the cover and ensure the ponds work efficiently, Parker added.

Odour complaints related to Clean Harbors' operation continue, said St. Clair Township Mayor Steve Arnold.

Incidents are less frequent and not as intense but are still occurring, he said.

"Usually there isn't a problem with odours at this time of the year,"

said Vokes. "But the last six months have been completely out of the ordinary.

"It's making people nervous about the spring."

Sarnia Observer

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Leachate Removed from Illegal Irish Dump

The Irish Times has reported today on a serious environmental crime which unfortunately is costing the local community and the nation a lot of money to clean up. It is bad enough if the site has been filled with no more than municipal solid waste, or commercial waste. Let's hope that the operator as not been accepting hazardous waste, which could make the leachate unaccepatble for treatment at the sewage works. Read our quotation below and also visit the original article at the Irish Times:

THE CLEAN-UP by the Environmental Protection Agency of an illegal dump at Kerdiffstown, Co Kildare, which will take many years to complete is to move a step closer with the removal of 8.5 million litres of polluted liquid from the contaminated site.

(The video below is about a different site.)

The agency spent some €3 million in January and February last year fighting a fire at the dump which resulted in the release of toxic smoke over the Naas area for more than four weeks.

Nephin Trading and associated companies Dean Waste and Jenzsoph Ltd operated at the landfill and recycling facility for 14 years until the agency secured court orders in 2010 shutting it down.

Work last year focused on securing and containing the site to prevent further pollution. The agency is moving to the next phase of removing waste from the site.

The agency has siphoned off more than 8.5 million litres of “leachate” – contaminated liquid from the dump which would otherwise have percolated into the ground.

It is seeking haulage companies to transport the liquid to Dublin’s municipal sewage plant at Ringsend for processing in contracts worth up to €1.5 million for the next four years.

A spokesman for the agency said work was progressing well.

There was a “minor spill” during the collection of leachate last month when a holding tank was overfilled, and approximately 500 litres reached a drain which flows to the Grand Canal.

Corrective action was taken immediately and the impact was “very localised and short-lived”, the agency said.

Further contracts will be put out to tender shortly in relation to site management and investigation to determine the best way to remediate the dump. Some preliminary investigation work was undertaken earlier this year, with the drilling of 24 boreholes to determine the waste buried.

Once the best method for disposing of the solid waste has been determined, the agency hopes to begin excavation of the dump and demolition and removal of the infrastructure on site.

This work is expected to be largely complete by 2017 and will be followed by covering the landfill with soil and plants, and the installation of permanent gas and leachate controls. However, the agency estimates the site will require management until 2047.

While the cost of the clean-up has been estimated at more than €30 million, accurate costs will not be known until the precise nature of the waste has been determined. The agency is continuing several legal actions in an attempt to recoup the costs.

The High Court last year rejected an application by the agency to make the directors of Nephin Trading personally liable for the clean-up costs, because relevant EU regulations had not been transposed into Irish law.

View the original article here

Old Albion Landfill Oozes Leachate - US

This article expresses some surprise that Old Albion Landfill still oozes Leachate. Leachate is being produced "unexpectedly" long after landfill closure at the Old Albion Landfill, and yet it has always been apparent that modern landfills may take centuries before leachate ceases. The highly contaminated liquid was first spotted about two years ago, oozing from the site also known as the Orleans Sanitary Landfill. It is a 35-acre site that was closed and capped in the mid-1990s. Read on for the article and visit the original site for further information:

The liquid – leachate or garbage juice from the landfill – had been pumped and hauled to the Albion sewer plant for about 15 years. That was until 2009, when a post-closure account, set up to pay for the landfill’s leachate pumping, was depleted.

Now the landfill is full of water, and it’s migrating out of the pumping holes in the big mound along Densmore Road. Dan Schuth, manager of the Orleans County Soil and Water Conservation District, worries the leachate could reach Sandy Creek.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation said the leachate doesn’t pose an imminent threat, but the DEC wants the liquid pumped and hauled away.

“There is no cause for immediate concern,” said Linda Vera, DEC citizen participation specialist. “However, since leachate is accumulating within the Orleans Sanitary Landfill, it should be routinely collected to avoid the potential of groundwater contamination.”

Groundwater monitoring wells surround OSL, and samples were routinely collected and analyzed until the fund was exhausted, Vera said.

Albion town officials have been approached by Richard Penfold from Blasdell about a new landfill in the community, a project that was first proposed by Waste Management in the mid-1990s. The DEC approved a permit for Waste Management, but the Town Board later rejected the project, a decision that was upheld in court.

As part of its proposal for a new 78-acre landfill, Waste Management offered to take care of OSL and another neighboring landfill, the 18-acre McKenna site. McKenna is a Superfund site and continues to have its leachate pumped and hauled to the Albion sewer plant.

Albion town officials don’t believe OSL is a town responsibility.

“It’s a privately owned site,” said Robert Roberson, the attorney for the town. “It’s not the town’s. We don’t have anything to do with it.”

Waste Management was leasing the property from John and Irene Smith, the former OSL owners, but that lease ended last year and the site is back is the hands of the Smith’s bankrupt estate, said Dawn Allen, the county’s real property tax director.

“The leachate needs to be pumped out and hauled away,” Roberson said. “I don’t know whose responsibility it is.”

Waste Management took over the OSL site after the operators declared bankruptcy in the early 1990s, leaving an open landfill. Waste Management took in more garbage at the site, ensuring the landfill was properly capped. The company set aside some of the money from that operation in 1993 and 1994 for a post-closure account. That fund ran out of money in 2009, Vera said.

She said the ongoing care for the landfill should fall on the owners, the Smiths, who declared bankruptcy. The town or the county, because they never operated the site, isn’t required to take over the post-closure care of the landfill, Vera said.

“However, either or both may choose to provide post-closure care due to concern about the environment,” she said.

During last week’s Town Board meeting, Roberson said that Penfold, a former president of CID Landfill, believes the Waste Management DEC permit is still valid in Albion.

That permit expires in November 2013, Vera said, but “many factors may complicate another operator's pursuit of that permit.” The permit has since been suspended and the original project, approved by the DEC in 2003, never commenced. Waste Management also requested that a related DEC air permit be discontinued.

While Schuth is worried that the leachate could reach Sandy Creek, DEC inspectors see no evidence of that so far, Vera said.

The surface water from the landfill drains to a quarry on the south side of the canal, Vera said. That quarry then discharges under the canal to another quarry on the north side of the canal, which then discharges to a tributary to Sandy Creek. Although the canal is close to the landfill, “there is little likelihood that any leachate from OSL would enter the canal,” she said.

Schuth, the Soil and Water leader, also expressed concern that the continued water buildup in the landfill could jeopardize the structural integrity of the landfill.

Structural stability of the landfill is difficult to predict, but it would be unlikely there will be a “blowout” of the side slope of the landfill, Vera said.

“A more likely possibility is leachate seeping into the groundwater over time because of the buildup of leachate on the liner,” she said.

The older portion of the landfill only has a compacted soil liner, which met the regulations when that section was built. Later phases of the landfill were constructed with improved liner systems, but none conform to the current requirement of a double composite liner system, Vera said.

Roberson, the attorney for the town, doesn’t expect the issue of caring for the landfill to go away anytime soon. And Albion won’t be alone as more privately owned landfills meet their capacity and face ongoing monitoring and maintenance.

“This is a looming problem down the road,” Roberson said. “These kinds of problems will only get more pronounced over the years.”

View the original article here

The Top 5 Tips On Leachate Treatment by Short Rotation Willow Coppicing

Many people face different challenges daily. Lots of people are called on to to deal with the challenge of leachate treatment by short rotation willow coppicing. Some apparently breeze through it, succeeding easily. Some do not ever succeed, although they try quite hard. Exactly why is this? Why is it that way? Exactly what are the key components that pre-determine probable success or failure? Which are the keys to finding yourself in that group that are going to enjoy success?

The true secret to success is in the planning, in identifying all important tasks beforehand. When you have an approach, once you know how, it is not difficult! And so, are you really serious about leachate treatment by short rotation willow coppicing? Why then you will want to get yourself "a track to run on", and know very well what it takes, up-front. In a nutshell, you'll want to acquire understanding of precisely what is involved and why it is important.

Let us discuss the 5 most essential things to know/steps to consider adopting to be able to succeed at leachate treatment by short rotation willow coppicing:

1. Short rotation willow coppicing which is often called SRC is a sustainable and low cost method for leachate treatment, but it will only ever be suitable for a very limited number of landfills. So why might this be important? The reader of this article should not run-off and assume it will be suitable or even approved by the regulatory authorities for his landfill site. So if I follow this route what is going to happen? A small proportion of landfill site owners will find that they can obtain cheap leachate treatment and disposal, while at the same time obtaining good green credentials for operating a sustainable energy efficient leachate treatment method.

2. The SRC method is based upon the irrigation of leachate into the willow crop only during periods when there is a soil-moisture deficit and this is mostly only during the summer months. That'll be apt to be important since the Environment Agency will expect that the irrigation only takes place when there will be a benefit to the crop from the nutrients in the leachate and those nutrients and all other contaminants must not run-off to pollute water courses nearby. And also, because if there is no benefit to a crop then the process is one of waste processing and not one of growing a valuable crop which will have willing buyers keen to use the chipped wood for a valuable purpose, such as heating homes and schools.

3. A successful application for a SRC method to treat leachate will have to tackle the problem of salinity build-up from leachate (which naturally has a higher than normal salt content) irrigated during the dry months. This is because if salt builds up in any soil the point will eventually be reached when it becomes too saline to support the willows. Controlled salinity flushing in wet weather in each autumn/ winter is essential for this method and it must be achieved without raising the salinity of nearby watercourses significantly at all. Those proposing SRC for leachate treatment must always have a "flushing method" or work-around for this problem, in their project. This could certainly also be a wise idea because the EA will normally expect this to be a problem considered and solved (at least in theory) before any submission for modification of the Environmental Permit can be passed.

4. The growing and harvesting of the short rotation coppicing can be sub-contracted to a local farmer. Alright, so what is really important about this? Most landfill operators don't posses the right equipment, or the trained staff, to undertake the farming work involved in cropping and chipping the SRC. Will there be some other reason? Some of the plant such as the willow coppice harvester equipment that most UK SRC use, is highly specialist and only used once every 3 years when the coppice shoots and foliage reach an optimum size/yield, and thus is equipment best hired rather than bought.

5. Leachate still, even from the most modern and highly controlled landfill sites, contains some additional trace quantities of metals, and like the salinity these must not be allowed to build up in the site. This means that they must be regulalrly monitored in most cases. And why might this become a good plan? As monitoring will normally show no measurable build-up for modern MSWs. What other reasons do you have back this up? The healthy appearance of the growing plants.

If you happen to really want to succeed at leachate treatment by short rotation willow coppicing, simply observe the above 5 steps. Then succeed and enjoy all of the benefits, enjoyment and fruits that go with your success. Disregarding them will set you up for sub par results. A lot worse results than might possibly otherwise be yours.

Discover some ways to understand leachate treatment by short rotation willow coppicing at our willow leachate treatment web site at leachate.co.uk/main/leachate-treatment/willow-coppicing-for-leachate-treatment.

Landfill Beset by Leachate Problems Seeks Police Escort - India

Not knowing the issues here, this article is hard to understand. It does not actually state why a police escort is sought, but presumably the local residents are so fed up with the landfill operator over bad-neighbour issues that there could be trouble for the contractors bringing in materials to remedy the problem. This seems crazy. If there are problems and the deliveries will reduce them the local people should allow the work to go ahead. Read the artcle below and visit the original web site by following the lick at the bottom of the page:

As part of resuming work on the sanitary landfill inside the Vilappilsala solid waste treatment plant, the City Corporation has requested the Police Department to provide escort for transporting the clay required for lining the various layers of the landfill.

According to officials, around 300 loads of clay will be required for layering the landfill which is being constructed to dispose of the garbage rejects that have accumulated inside the plant over the years.

Transportation of clay to the Vilappilsala plant would commence on February 13 and would continue for nearly a week, Deputy Mayor G. Happykumar said.

“Urban Affairs Minister P.K. Kunhalikutty had the other day convened a meeting of contractors who have taken up works of sanitary landfill and leachate treatment plant inside the plant and officials of the Kerala Sustainable Urban Development Project (KSUDP), the nodal agency for the projects. At the meeting, it was decided to immediately resume the pending work in the plant as per the directive of the High Court. As per this, we are resuming the work on the sanitary landfill. Work on the leachate treatment plant will be resumed soon,” Mr Happykumar said.

Corporation health officer D. Sreekumar said that the sanitary landfill would have the capacity of 95 tonnes of garbage rejects a day for seven years. The Rs.6 crore project was being funded by the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM).

Mr. Happykumar said that construction of sanitary landfill and leachate teratment plant would be completed by March-April. “Whether the plant will be closed in the future or not, completion of these two project is crucial to combat the environment pollution in the plant. Both the accumulated rejects as well as leachate seeping from it will have to be properly treated, even if the government decided to decommission the plant,'' he said.

View the original article here

Perry County landfill gets permit to expand - The Buckeye Lake Beacon

COLUMBUS – Ohio EPA has issued Tunnel Hill Partners LP a final solid waste permit and modification to its wastewater discharge permit. The final air permit was issued earlier this summer. The company requested the permits to expand the landfill at 2500 Township Road 205, Route 2 in New Lexington. The landfill spans Pike, Harrison and Clayton townships in Perry County.

Ohio EPA held a public hearing on May 11, 2011, and an information session on June 3, 2010, to explain the proposed expansion, answer questions and receive public comments. Before issuing the permits, Ohio EPA reviewed the technical aspects of the applications and determined that they met the requirements of state and federal clean air and water quality standards and solid waste rules.

The solid waste permit will allow a lateral and vertical expansion at the 544-acre facility. The lateral expansion will increase the approved disposal area by 69 acres. The vertical expansion authorizes new disposal capacity above the previously authorized 49-acre disposal area. This will bring the landfill’s footprint to 118 acres. ( Currently, the landfill’s developed footprint is 11.7 acres, though it has been previously approved to occupy 49 acres.)

Additionally, the permit increases the authorized maximum daily waste receipt from 5,000 tons to 8,000 tons. If the landfill took in 8,000 tons of waste per day, it would take 11.5 years to fill. The landfill design includes a composite liner; leachate collection (the water that has come in contact with buried landfill wastes); surface water management; ground water monitoring; and final closure cap. The permit also requires 30 years of post-closure care and financial assurance for closure and post-closure care.

A draft modification to the landfill’s wastewater discharge permit took effect on September 1, 2011. The modification was required since the surface area contributing storm water runoff to the sedimentation pond will change. Landfill leachate is not permitted to go to the sediment pond. The permit limits discharges of pollutants into Rush Creek.

In June, Ohio EPA issued the company a final air permit that establishes allowable emissions from unpaved roadways and parking areas, the municipal solid waste landfill and rail unloading areas based on an anticipated increase in the waste acceptance rate. The air permit also establishes requirements for landfill gas collection and control.

The permits and related materials are available for review at Ohio EPA’s Southeast District Office (2195 Front Street, Logan, Ohio 43138) by first calling (740) 385-8501 or (800) 686-7330.

Issuance of the final solid waste permit and wastewater permit modification can be appealed to the Ohio Environmental Review Appeals Commission (ERAC). Appeals generally must be filed within 30 days of issuing the final action; therefore, Ohio EPA recommends that anyone wishing to file an appeal contact ERAC online or at (614) 466-8950 for more information.

View the original article here

Leachate Problems are Now Minor in Eastern Creek Sydney Landfill's 5 Clean-Up Orders in 5 Years

The locals say that there is a "Pollution trail to this megadump", and yet leachate problems affecting watercourses don't seem to be major, and are less acute than in the previous 4 years this article mentions. It is an operational hazard for a landfill owner that delivery vehicles may fly tip, and the public blame the site operator for transgressions which in truth are beyond the control of the landfill operator. Nevertheless, there is no excuse for leachate odours when it must surely be possible to recirculate leachate inoto old mature waste where it will be treated anaeribically and without odur within the waste? Read the article below about this case and visit the original article site by using the link below the quoted article:

IAN MALOUF, the man who boasts he is opening the biggest landfill site in the southern hemisphere at Eastern Creek, acknowledges pollution lapses by his waste empire. But he blames them on rogue employees and waste transporters.

(Video shows Lucas Heights Landfill, Sydney and not the landfill in the article.)

Mr Malouf, the self-made millionaire behind Dial a Dump, told The Sun-Herald that he runs a conscientious business and pollution offences this year arose from employees ''breaching strict guidelines and procedures of which they were adequately aware''.

But it is not the first time. Companies linked to Mr Malouf have been subject to five clean-up orders in the past five years, according to the Office of Environment and Heritage.

In April this year, the OEH received numerous complaints about odours again coming from Mr Malouf's Alexandra Landfill site. A surprise inspection found a pipe connected to infested leachate, which was pumping it into a stormwater drain.

Then, in June, OEH inspectors again visited the site and found his wife Larissa's company, Boiling Pty Ltd, had 170,000-cubic-metre stockpiles of waste contaminated with asbestos. Other pollution breaches date back to 2002, when Mr Malouf's company Alexandria Landfill Pty Ltd was ordered to clean up leachates after residents complained about a stench.

In 2007, another property, at Marulan, was found with 1300 cubic metres of asbestos-contaminated soil levelled and spread across it. This property belongs to Mr Malouf's mother-in-law, Kathleen Hopkins's company, Kathkin Pty Ltd, as trustee for his five children.

More below

A spokesman for the Premier, Barry O'Farrell, said he was made aware of the investigations by the OEH before attending the opening party for Mr Malouf's new venture at the Eastern Creek landfill site on December 8 - a $500,000 celebration that featured 600 guests, acrobats, fireworks and a lion cub.

Mr O'Farrell's spokesman said: ''That's why he went out of his way during his remarks at the opening to say the NSW government has a strong independent environmental regulator and he expects all companies to comply or face the full force of the law.''

But inquiries by The Sun-Herald have revealed that Mr Malouf - who with his wife has donated almost $40,000 to the Liberal Party in recent years - has not yet been granted a licence to operate the landfill known as the Genesis facility. The application is with the OEH, which is considering it.

Alexandria Landfill and Boiling are yet to complete the clean-up ordered at the Alexandria sites.

Mr Malouf said the property on Red Hills Road at Marulan was cleaned up at his own expense. He said it was inadvertently contaminated with asbestos after a delivery of landscaping materials to the family property.

''Naturally I would not endanger the health and wellbeing of my children intentionally,'' he said.

More below

Mr Malouf said the companies had never been prosecuted and that he ''would have preferred that these events necessitating clean-up notices had not occurred''.

In an emailed response to questions, he said: ''As the CEO of the organisation which has held environmental protection licences for almost 25 years, it is understandable that during that period of time one or two incidents would be expected to occur. Those employees never get named but as a hands-on CEO I must carry that burden.''

Mr Malouf lists his address as a mansion in Vaucluse which traded last year for $15 million and was once owned by the Adler family. He is a law school dropout who decided that his future was in waste. After leaving school, he has said, he raised $700 cash to buy a truck and went door-to-door offering to take rubbish to the tip. He bought a tipper truck and a bobcat and his mother answered the phones while his father helped shovel loads of rubbish. Over the past two decades, he has built the Dial a Dump empire which stretches from skip bins to waste and recycling.

Records show he bought the Alexandria Landfill site from Sydney City Council in 2000 and created a recycling facility. In 2002 he was issued with four clean-up notices after the OEH received complaints relating to odours. Inspectors found landfill leachate was causing the stench. Another clean-up notice was issued after failed attempts to fix the problem and complaints increased.

In 2005 Mr Malouf paid $143 million for the Eastern Creek site and he said he spent another $157 million developing it. It will boast state-of-the-art recycling technology. He has promised there will be no odours, and lining of the pit to stop leaching.

Asked about the leachate at the Alexandria site, Mr Malouf said: ''We are not aware that it [pumping of leachates] has ever happened and the matter is currently being investigated by OEH. Management has conducted an internal voluntary environmental audit and believes it has isolated the identity of a person or persons who may have potentially breached the site's operational procedures.''

The OEH report said the asbestos ''stockpiles'' at the same site were believed to have been generated by the processing of waste. Mr Malouf blamed a waste transporter for depositing the material. He said that transporter had now been banned.

The OEH said it had ''current'' investigations into the Malouf companies, which were preparing advice about how to fix the problems.

View the original article here

Vilappilsala Capacity of garbage plant inadequate

Leachate from yard frequently reaches the Karamana river

The garbage plant at Vilappilsala can effectively process only a portion of the solid waste that reaches the yard from the capital city, a report submitted by the Kerala State Pollution Control Board (PCB) to the High Court of Kerala has observed.

The plant has the capacity to process only 90 tonnes of solid waste a day.

The average quantity of waste reaching the 46-acre plant daily, until it was shut down on December 21, 2011, was around 203 tonnes, of which 114 tonnes was biodegradable waste, according to the report.

PCB environmental engineer K.R. Santhoshkumar and advocate commission K. Meera were tasked by the High Court to inspect the plant and report the facilities there.

The report further observed that the leachate flowing from two uncapped landfills inside the plant frequently reached the Karamana river through the Meenambally canal, causing river water pollution.

Although the leachate is collected in temporary ponds and treated using alum, lime and bleaching powder, these temporary measures were inadequate to check the pollution caused by the leachate.

The PCB has in its report directed the City Corporation to commission the permanent leachate treatment plant under construction inside the plant within 60 days.

The board has recommended the construction of a dike between the landfills and the stream to prevent flow of leachate into the river.In order to control the stench emanating from the windrow composts in the plant, the PCB has recommended frequent turning of windrows or providing forced aeration. As of now the windrows are turned every five days.

Another recommendation to control the stench was providing sufficient ventilation by providing adequate number of air blowers and bio-filters.

The PCB report also makes a set of recommendations for maintaining the general hygienic conditions inside the plant.

Providing a 100 meter buffer zone around the periphery of the plant is among these.

Ensuring source level segregation of plastic and biodegradable waste and transporting garbage to the plant in covered vehicles with leachate collection facility are among the other recommendations.

The PCB report has directed the Corporation to complete all the recommended modifications at the Vilappilsala plant within 60 days.

View the original article here

Guatali Leachate Raises Sewage Works Discharge Issues - Plus Funny Leachate Drinking Video!

Guam Waterworks Authority will need to be careful about accepting leachate at their sewage works. Leachate  being a very high strength liquid could nock out a smallish treatment works. Here, quoted below, is the article to which I refer:

A company that hopes to build a landfill in Santa Rita has proposed to truck leachate to the Hag't'a wastewater treatment plant, but hasn't sought the approval of the Guam Waterworks Authority.

WE HOPE YOU LIKE OUR (UNRELATED) LEACHATE VIDEO BELOW. WE FOUND IT AMUSING!

Wagdy Guirguis, president of Guam Resource Recovery Partners, said Tuesday that trucking leachate is just a backup plan that will never actually be used, but his company's assessment of its proposed Guatali landfill says otherwise.

And there have been no discussions about Waterworks accepting thousands of gallons of leachate, which is basically garbage juice, from the Guatali landfill, said agency spokeswoman Heidi Ballendorf.

If a truck full of leachate shows up tomorrow unannounced, it would be turned away, she said. Unless an agreement is negotiated to preserve water quality, the Waterworks will reject the waste, she said.

That could be a problem for Guam Resource Recovery Partners, which is seeking a permit for its Guatali landfill proposal from the Guam Environmental Protection Agency.

Guam EPA has asked the public to comment on the controversial proposal. Comments are due by Dec. 13.

Guam Resource Recovery Partners has proposed to build its landfill on an 87-acre parcel of Chamorro Land Trust property in the Guatali area of Santa Rita. The 22-acre landfill cells would be bracketed by wetlands and north of a river basin.

If the landfill permit is approved, Guam Resource Recovery Partners plans to collect garbage on the property for three to five years, at which point it hopes to install an incinerator, which will burn the waste to produce energy. An incinerator of this type is currently illegal in Guam, so the plan hinges on a revision of law and additional permits.

However, in the years before the incinerator is built, Guam Resource Recovery Partners plans to stockpile waste in its two landfill cells, and a landfill facility like that will inevitably produce leachate.

The Guatali landfill is expected to produce an average of 36,000 gallons of leachate daily, according to an impact assessment filed with the permit application. The total will increase in the rainy season, when more storm water seeps through the landfill.

According to the proposal, some of the leachate will be absorbed through a process called "recirculation," which filters the trashy liquid back through the landfill, where it is re-absorbed.

Any leftover leachate will be trucked to the Hag't'a wastewater treatment plant, the impact assessment states. The document doesn't estimate how much liquid would be sent to the treatment plant.

If Guatali goes as planned, no leachate will make the trip to Hag't'a, Guirguis said. Despite the statements in the impact assessment, Guirguis said Guam Resource Recovery Partners expects that all of the Guatali leachate will be absorbed or evaporated when it recirculates through the landfill.

The company hasn't negotiated an agreement with GWA because it doesn't expect it will need one, Guirguis said. Recirculation should dispose of all the landfill's leachate through absorption and evaporation, even during the rainy season, Guirguis said.

The landfill impact assessment says the exact opposite.

"It is expected that leachate generation will exceed losses due to absorption and evaporation during the rainy season," the Guam Resource Recovery Partners document states. "At such times, leachate will be trucked off site for disposal at the Agana wastewater treatment plant."

Regardless of whether it's a backup plan or not, if Guam Resource Recovery Partners wants to dispose of a single drop of leachate in Hag't'a, it will have to broker a deal with GWA, Ballendorf said.

For example, Gershman, Brickner & Bratton Inc., the federal receiver in charge of solid waste operations in Guam, including the government landfill in Inarajan, only was allowed to send leachate to the Inarajan wastewater treatment plant after negotiating a similar agreement.

Now the receiver is able to pump its leachate to GWA's southern facility, but the company had to spend millions to "do it right," Ballendorf said.

"They promised to fund a five-year study of leachate to make sure it doesn't hurt the wastewater plant," Ballendorf wrote in an email. "If the leachate becomes a problem, they have agreed to put in a pre-treatment facility to fix that. Money is put aside in escrow for that."

David Manning, a local representative for Gershman, Brickner & Bratton Inc., wrote in an email that the receiver funded some capacity upgrades to ensure the Inarajan plant wouldn't be overwhelmed by the increase in waste.

Guirguis insisted the Layon landfill's leachate pipe wasn't in operation yet, but Manning and GWA confirmed it was. Guirguis also said the Layon landfill was using the re-circulation method, but Manning said this was never considered by the receiver.

"While I am not an expert in this area, ... I do know that one of the primary reasons we did not consider the re-circulation method is that it apparently has significant potential for problems in wet climates," Manning said.

View the original article here

Landfill leachate pilot awarded - Environmental Expert (press release)

Dynatec was awarded a contract in late 2011 to provide a turnkey pilot system for landfill leachate treatment for the City of Calgary. Here is their news release.

(Above video is by another MBR company but we thought it would be of interest. Dynatec do not appear to have produced a video of their product for YouTube.)

Dynatec was the only company to respond to the tender that has experience in producing pilot systems of this type and proven experience with landfill leachate treatment systems.  CH2M Hill is the city's engineer. The contract value is around $1M.  The system is expected to start up later this year.

Landfill leachate is a difficult wastewater to treat.

The leachate to be treated in this project includes high BOD and COD, heavy metals, and high ammonia. We face the challenge to evaluate treatment processes to either discharge to a POTW or directly to surface or ground water. The system will have to operate under extreme conditions with temperatures reaching -400. The system is designed for flexibility to evaluate different treatment processes.

Dynatec will use chemical pretreatment followed by our Hi-Rate MBR with aerobic and anoxic (MLE process) and a two-pass RO system. The pilot system will be containerized for mobility because the city wants to be able to test the process at other facilities.

Why Dynatec?  Dynatec has extensive experience in difficult wastewater treatment applications such as this one. Projects like the hazardous landfill in Bellevue, MI have given us the experience required to succesfully execute this type of project.

View the original article here

Landfill seepage, costs up says BoH chairman - Worcester Telegram

In we see a citizen who is taking an interest in her local landfill, and really keeping her local council on the ball! Read the article quoted below and you will see just how well Ms. Cocalis has defined the leachate problem. I would say that she is a big asset to the community. I wonder whether, given as she says, that the landfill will continue to produce leachate for many years it would not be better to investigate building a dedictaed leachate treatment plant on the landfill site operated by the site staff. I have designed many of these and they have saved much money, and continue to do so,  the landfill owners a lot of money long term. Read on for the article:

Landfill seepage, costs are up says BoH chairman. So, an alternative model sought for leachate disposal

The Board of Health chairman, STURBRIDGE, said that not only has the level of seepage at the town's landfill gone up considerably, but the cost of removing the liquid pollutant is already way over budget. While the town allocates $26,000 for the collection of leachate at the landfill on Breakneck Road for the entire fiscal year, it has spent approximately $71,000 for leachate collection in the last six months, according to Board of Health Chairman Linda N. Cocalis. And the previous fiscal year cost was reportedly $76,000, which was $50,000 more (and triple) the original amount that was budgeted.

"I don"t know how many of you like to visit landfills and check them out? I do it as a hobby", Ms. Cocalis said, addressing the town administrator and Board of Selectmen earlier this week. "They should look as smooth as silk. They should be at about a 2 percent grade. If you are standing where the road is and you look down to where the refuge is in our landfill, there's approximately, a 6-foot drop with all the water from up here is all going down there. We don't want that. That is really, really bad."

Ms. Cocalis, who also refers to leachate as "garbage juice," blames the open cell being in the middle of two capped cells as the main culprit for the town?s increasing leachate problem. When the town capped its second cell at the landfill in 2009, they opened a new (and its final) cell, which is in the middle of two capped cells.

Last year, an estimated 2,462,000 gallons of leachate were collected from the landfill and taken to the wastewater treatment plant a few miles away for disposal. In 2010, an estimated 555,000 gallons were collected. Ms. Cocalis said every month, the town is spending $12,000-$13,000 in removal costs.

"Every day, there's a truck going there four or five times a day," Ms. Cocalis said. "The longer we wait, the more it's going to cost."

Ms. Cocalis suggested the town look into purchasing a 3,000-gallon pumper truck to collect the leachate, conducting a cost benefit analysis of the entire operation, immediately go out to bid for leachate collection and figure out ways to mitigate the amount of leachate seeping at the landfill.

Selectmen Chairman Thomas R. Creamer said he was alarmed by the "pretty tremendous rate" the leachate is increasing and the "inexplicitly rising" costs to collect it.

?To me, the biggest concerns are to identify why there has been nearly a 100 percent (price) increase already over last year?s number for the whole year, in the first six months, and, what alternatives does the town have in trying to reduce the costs,? Mr. Creamer said. ?We can?t keep going back to the residents on a regular basis, seeking emergency fund transfers.?

Town Administrator Shaun A. Suhoski said he has discussed an "alternative model" in leachate disposal, which includes bringing the process "in-house". Furthermore, a meter system has been installed in the wastewater treatment plant that will electronically monitor the amount of leachate treated at the plant, Mr. Suhoski said.

"We wish we had a little more time to get all the parties at the table and have a plan ready before we highlighted the problem", Mr. Suhoski said. I think bringing it to the Board of Selectmen's attention is helpful so the community is aware of this. By educating the community, now we can look at options, alternatives, for cost savings. And that's the plan. That's what we're doing".

"Ten years, maybe even longer, after we close that landfill, we will still have leachate", Ms. Cocalis said. "You will have to still collect it, by law, forever and ever, until it stops making leachate. There are landfills in Rome from the Roman times that actually still make leachate today".

View the original article here

Leachate Time Bomb in Cincinnati

Resident Jeff Moore must realise that he is right to be concerned. We quote below an article which suggests that a great folly was comitted when this landfill was allowed. Now it will inevitably cost a lot of money to protect a major water supply source:

JACKSON TWP. - Jeff Moore worries about the 1 billion pounds of toxic materials buried less than a half-mile from his home on Aber Road.

It's in a 208-acre landfill in rural, northeastern Clermont County - one of only two dumps in Ohio ever licensed to take hazardous waste. And while the site on Aber hasn't accepted such waste in more than 20 years, Moore knows it contains "some real bad stuff," including PCBs, benzene, arsenic, cyanide, toluene, mercury, pesticides and thousands more contaminants.

He fears that toxins could seep into groundwater and the creek that runs behind his home. And he questions what will happen when the owner's 30-year requirement to monitor the landfill expires in 2027.

Those concerns are shared by Clermont County officials and their environmental consultants, who for many years have pointed to troubling issues at the closed landfill known as Cecos. Since 1988, the county has spent $10 million on legal and consulting fees, mostly in an attempt to fix what it says are flaws in the existing plan to monitor the site.

"It's not so much that the county expects there to be an immediate major mishap. It's really about protecting us in the future," said county administrator David Spinney.

The county's biggest concern is that the landfill poses a potential threat to Harsha Lake, a main source of the county's drinking water.

While the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and the landfill's owner say measures to protect the environment are in place and working as designed, the county contends that its statistical analysis of data that Cecos is required to report indicates some leakage has already occurred.

"Is it a catastrophic leak? No. Is this a precursor of what will continue to happen? The answer is yes. Eventually it will leak enough that it will present a problem," said Linda Aller, noting that such landfills were designed to contain material for 30 years. She is principal geologist with Bennett & Williams, a Westerville, Ohio-based environmental consulting firm that has been working on Cecos issues for Clermont County since the late 1980s.

Other technical experts hired by the county agree.

Brent Huntsman, president of Beavercreek, Ohio-based Terran Corp., is a geologist who specializes in ground water issues. Given the amount of waste at Cecos, he said, "it's just a matter of time before it escapes into the environment."

That has happened elsewhere. He points, for example, to U.S. Department of Energy hazardous waste landfills such as the Mound Site in Miamisburg. "If you look at all of their large installations, yes, all of their landfills have failed."

At Cecos, "It's going to be sooner rather than later," Huntsman said. "It's going to be within our lifetime."

That's why the county is spending an estimated $5.6 million to expand the water treatment plant at Harsha Lake and outfit it with a sophisticated granular-activated carbon filtration system, Spinney said. But even the new system, he added, "doesn't take care of everything" that might escape from the landfill.

For its part, the Ohio EPA said the current landfill monitoring plan, generally speaking, offers adequate protection. And it said Phoenix-based Republic Services Inc., which became the dump's owner in 2008 when it merged with Allied Waste Industries Inc., is fulfilling its monitoring requirements.

But those requirements are "grossly inadequate," said G. Fred Lee, an environmental consultant in El Macero, Calif., whose contract with Clermont County ended in 1999. Lee, a former university professor with a doctorate in environmental engineering from Harvard, has in the past five decades evaluated the environmental impacts of about 80 landfills, including Cecos.

Republic and Ohio EPA are working to resolve issues on a revised monitoring plan for the landfill, said Connie Dall, Republic's environmental manager at Cecos. She said the company hopes to submit an amended plan early next year.

But if the long, troubled history of Cecos offers any indication, a final resolution isn't likely soon.

Cecos dates to 1972, when Clermont Environmental Reclamation began operation of a 19-acre sanitary landfill. Within a few years, the U.S. EPA approved it for hazardous waste disposal, and the site eventually grew to 208 acres.

Clermont County documents say Cecos includes seven football stadium-sized excavations, or cells, up to 56 feet deep, each containing hazardous waste. Liners and recompacted clay are supposed to keep leachate - the toxic liquid that seeps through waste in the cells - from escaping.

The waste came from many sources, including chemical companies, power companies and businesses with household names, such as Procter & Gamble, IBM, General Electric and Westinghouse, Spinney said.

In the 1980s, criminal charges for violations of hazardous waste laws were brought against Cecos, and both the Ohio and U.S. EPA denied hazardous waste permits. By 1990, hazardous waste disposal had stopped.

Cecos submitted a plan, spelling out how the facility would be maintained and monitored. After a number of revisions, the Ohio EPA approved the plan in September 1994.

Clermont County appealed, saying the plan didn't provide adequate long-term protection to residents. The appeal dragged on for 13 years, never reaching a resolution.

So in 2007, the county decided to take a different approach. It reached a settlement with the Ohio EPA and Cecos, calling for Cecos to submit a revised monitoring plan and the county to submit a petition outlining its issues of concern.

The county's petition, filed last December, includes 2,358 pages of appendices and attachments in support of 15 issues the county says should be addressed. It asks, among other things, for continued or stepped-up monitoring of groundwater wells, leachate, surface water and underdrains, which are piping networks that detect leachate movement through the bottom of cells.

Bonnie Buthker, acting chief of the Ohio EPA's southwest district office, said some of Clermont County's requests can't be granted because they exceed the agency's regulatory authority. She declined to be specific, noting the county's petition is "still under review."

She did say, however, that EPA's interpretation of data submitted by Cecos indicates there has been no leakage from the cells that contain hazardous waste.

"Not from the cells, no," Buthker said. "Not in the 14 years we've been monitoring this."

But the county's consultants, using the same reported data from Cecos, arrived at a different conclusion.

"The consistent presence of volatile organic compounds in the underdrains in all the ... cells indicates that leachate is migrating into them. And once contamination enters the underdrains, it is no longer contained," the county says in its petition.

Spinney, who will retire as county administrator at the end of the year, said, "You'll never get me to say (the leakage) is minor. Is it a health hazard to people in the surrounding area or to the water supply today? No, I don't believe so from what I've seen. But it's an indication of a leak, which means there a potential for a health hazard in the future."

Dall said volatile organic compounds were detected in underdrains in the older part of the landfill, but that corrective measures were put in place to "close that off from the environment, so those (compounds) can't get anywhere. All the analysis we're getting is showing that everything is where it's supposed to be."

She said Republic is "making sure we are a good citizen in Clermont County and the state of Ohio. ... We are doing what the Ohio EPA and the U.S. EPA are asking us to do, and we're doing it appropriately.

"The facility is a safe facility."

As for the landfill's liners, two types were installed at Cecos to serve as a barrier between waste and the environment. Older cells have a 30-mil (slightly less than 1/32 of an inch) synthetic rubber liner; newer cells have an 80-mil (or slightly less than 1/12 of an inch) liner made of high-density polyethylene.

"These liners will fail," said Lee. "That's not a debatable issue."

Said Buthker: "It's really variable on how long liners can last. That's why you have other systems in place (such as wells, leak detectors and underdrains) to monitor to make sure if you have a leak, you can address it right away."

She added: "We feel the existing monitoring plan is protective. We're working to improve that monitoring plan."

Jeff Moore is wary. "Some people put their faith in the government, like they ain't never going to do (anything) wrong, but I'll tell you, I've seen it go the opposite direction on that," he said.

"You know what happened at Fernald," he added, referring to the former uranium-processing plant 18 miles northwest of Cincinnati. It was notorious for contaminating the environment and required a $4.4 billion cleanup.

Many of Moore's neighbors don't share his concerns. A reporter spoke with about a dozen homeowners on roads that border Cecos property, and most echoed the thoughts of Floyd Brate, a Smokey Road resident who said the landfill was a non-issue, "as long as they keep monitoring it like they're supposed to."

Ohio law requires such landfills to be monitored for 30 years after closure, which in the case of Cecos extends to 2027. At that point, the owner could petition to walk away.

"They would have to demonstrate that the waste was no longer there and no longer posed a threat," Ohio EPA's Buthker said. "That would be very difficult to demonstrate." She noted that Ohio's environmental regulations say the state EPA director can extend the monitoring period.

But Clermont County officials want more of a guarantee. They say that because most of the waste in the landfill will remain dangerous "virtually forever," a plan should be established to care for the landfill into perpetuity.

View the original article here

Dynatec Provides MBR System for Hazardous Landfill

The Problem

A hazardous waste landfill in Belleville, MI, owned by the Environmental Quality Company had a problem. They needed to develop a treatment process to remove COD, high TDS, heavy metals, phenol, PCB’s, Ammonia, and Molybdenum from the landfill leachate. Current treatment comprised of chlorination and activated carbon treatment was very costly.

Evaluation

The treatment process was challenging. The chemical treatment supplied was based upon the experience batch treating the wastewater and numerous bench scale treatability studies. An MBR process was selected for piloting because it was the best option to nitrify, reduce the high COD and phenol and overcome the potentially toxic conditions. Dynatec was engaged to supply a pilot treatment plant to be used as an investigative tool for the design of the full scale treatment process. The pilot operation phase of the project lasted almost 3 years, where problems were identified and solutions found.

Some unique challenges offered by this application were:

Foaming - Toxicity from the metals, phenol , and other unidentified substances

Mixed Liquor conditioning

Biological temperature sensitivity

Sensitive nitrification process

Difficult chemical precipitation of metals

Small footprint required

Dynatec was engaged to supply and install the full scale system because of Dynatec’s experience with the treatment technologies employed, their familiarity with the project, and the requirement for a high rate MBR process operating at high MLSS.

The Solution

Dynatec provided and installed a system that included a stainless steel insulated covered bioreactor with both heating and cooling capabilities to control temperature within a range suitable for achieving the treatment goals. To solve the foaming problem, a combination of jet aeration, defoamer, DO control, and concentrate return splash plates were employed along with an emergency potable water spray to prevent foam-over.

The membrane filtration equipment was designed to make efficient use of a small existing building that houses the membranes, controls, dewatering and other equipment.

The process includes chemical / physical treatment of the leachate both before and after the MBR. The post MBR chemical precipitation is for Molybdenum. The MBR removes compounds that were found to interfere with the precipitation process. The treated water is discharged to sanitary sewer.

A sludge tank receives the solids from both clarifiers of the pre and post chemical treatment systems as well as the WAS. Additional iron and lime is added and mixed in the sludge tank prior to feed to the filter press for dewatering. The solids are discharged within the landfill.

The Process

The process design consists of the following:

The hazardous wastewater is pretreated for removal of CN, Cr, Cu, Pb, Ni and Zn.The hazardous wastewater is mixed with non hazardous wastewater in a 500,000 gallon EQ tank to help make nitrification work. Approximately 65% of the wastewater discharged to the EQ tank is hazardous WW and 35% is non haz.The WW in the EQ tank is sent to the MBR for treatment for reduction in phenol ammonia nitrogen and COD.The MBR permeate is post treated for removal of molybdenum. The moly is apparently organically bound and does not precipitate adequately in the pretreatment.Sludge from the metals precipitation is mixed with WAS and dewatered in a filter press.

Operation

The system started up in March of 2010. As expected, the activated sludge took less than two months of conditioning before effective treatment was achieved due to the information and knowledge that was gained during piloting. A special bacterial culture was added to promote nitrification, which improved performance.

The COD  of the hazardous wastewater varies significantly, typical values observed have been between 5,000 mg/L and 12,000 mg/L. After blending with non hazardous leachate the COD is typically in the range between 3,000 mg/l and 6,000 mg/l.

The system operator is able to adjust conditions as needed. The system is currently operating at high mixed liquor concentration, an average of 24,000 mg/l. The jet aeration system makes operation at this level possible. Temperature ranges from a low of 25’C in the winter to 36’C in the summer. A natural gas fired heater heats the leachate in the winter in the recirculating loop between the bioreactor and the UF. The heater runs very little as the tank is covered and insulated. The system also has the ability to cool the mixed liquor as the temperature approaches 38’C to prevent thermophilic conditions from developing.

The continuous addition of defoamer is necessary. The concentrate return hits splash plates in the reactor to create a spray of sorts to help depress foam. There is also a fresh water spray available for use that rings the top inside of the reactor.

After startup, the system is operating as designed. The operators have used the emergency potable water spray to prevent foam-over of the bioreactor a couple times, with no other major issues. The system is exceeding expectations. Phenol in the effluent is typically below 0. 1 mg/L and metals removal is consistently below discharge requirements and below toxicity levels required to protect the biological process.

Conclusion

This is a very tough job. The complete and comprehensive system that Dynatec provided made this a success, and many lessons were learned for future projects. Dynatec was the right choice for this difficult MBR application. The many years of experience Dynatec has applying membranes to wastewater has enabled it to design and provide systems that perform in even the most difficult applications.

The system payback is expected to be very short. The system is meeting all its treatment objectives.

View the original article here

EU Citizens Never Have to Worry About Chemicals which US Landfill Operator Cleaning Up from Leachate

As an EU citizen it is easy to feel very smug. Once upon a time the US was regarded as an advanced nation, but in this article we are told about groundwater contamination from a chamical which is a liquid disposed to tis US landfill which has long been banned throughout all EU states. No EU landowner need fear that tetrachloroethene and trichloroethene will appear in their groundwater since the dispoal of hazardous chemicals like this, and indeed all liquids to landfill was banned more than 10 years ago. The US are crazy to still allow such practices. Read more and find out what this is all about:

One week after the Virginia Supreme Court overturned a $9 million judgment against Campbell County in a contamination lawsuit, officials said they remain committed to removing the leachate that got into the groundwater on Claude and Virginia Royals’ Rustburg property.

“We said from the beginning there was no question that the leachate was from the landfill,” said Campbell County Administrator David Laurrell. “We’ll continue to move forward until we completely take care of it.”

In 2002, the Royals discovered their well water had been contaminated by the neighboring landfill and for the last 10 years the county has been working to remove the chemicals.

Recent water samples show remediation is working, Laurrell said.

The Royals continue to use the well water on their property, avoiding the contaminated wells. They also have access to county water if they wish to connect to it.

Several times each year, Campbell County tests water from 51 sites on the landfill and the Royals’ property. The tests look for more than 200 different chemicals. Of the 3,800 recent test results, only 23 showed elements in the water at levels higher than allowed by the Environmental Protection Agency’s groundwater protection standards, said Clif Tweedy, deputy county administrator.

Tetrachloroethene and trichloroethene are two of the chemicals that continue to exist in the groundwater at amounts exceeding EPA standards. Tetrachloroethene, or PCE, is a synthetic liquid commonly used in the textile industry and in dry cleaning as a metal degreaser. It is considered a potential human carcinogen and consuming water with elevated levels over the course of a lifetime may increase cancer risk.

Under certain conditions, PCE in groundwater can degrade into trichloroethene, or TCE, and vinylchloride, which are more toxic.

Two of the 51 water sites tested have elevated TCE levels of 7 parts per billion. The maximum allowable by the government is 5 ppb.

When water treatment began in 2002, TCE was 136 parts per billion.

One site tested had an elevated PCE level of 8.3 parts per billion. As with TCE, the maximum allowable level is 5 ppb.

In 2001, TCE levels were as high as 29.8 on the site.

PCE and TCE — and benzene, vinylchloride and methylenechloride — are chemicals commonly found in landfills or in nearby leaks, said Tweedy.

At the Rustburg landfill, water testing shows the levels of benzene, vinylchloride and methylenechloride are so low they cannot be detected at most sites and where it does exist, it is well below the government requirements.

“I think the remediation is going much quicker than we originally thought,” said Laurrell, adding some of the Volatile Organic Compounds, or VOCs, have dropped by 95 percent.

“That’s just a remarkable improvement in a short amount of time,” he said.

In 2003, 95 percent of the wells tested showed contamination above allowable levels. Today, eight years later with an even greater number of wells in place, just .5 percent are above the standard.

The entire remediation system has been fully operational for two years.

The landfill received gas vents in 2002, a gas extraction system in 2003 and the first of several series of groundwater remediation wells in 2005.

Although the Supreme Court decision on Jan. 13 closed the case for the county, the Royals have until Jan. 23 to request a rehearing with the Supreme Court.

The Royals’ attorney has not revealed if the couple will pursue one.

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US Municipal Body Which is Both Gamekeeper and Poacher Gets into Trouble with Leachate

It looks to me as if this is a simple case of municipal body which owns and runs this landfill is both gamekeeper and poacher has got into trouble, and the citizens would do best to change that situation first, rather than spend on a legal case arguing about it. Here is a quotation from the article:

The Citizens for Clean Water board of directors plans to discuss funding for a lawsuit to compel the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality to close the NABORS landfill in north Baxter County, according to CFCW president, Bob Cohee.

The CFCW board's next meeting is Feb. 7.

Cohee said Wednesday he will recommend the creation of a legal fund of at least $20,000 to move forward with the suit.

The suit, if filed, would mark the second time CFCW has called out the regulator in a court of law to enforce state regulations regarding the NABORS landfill. Cohee says the NABORS landfill has accumulated a long record of violations pertaining to overfilled areas within the landfill and a plume of pollutants seeping into sample waters taken from within and around one overfilled area.

The owner of the landfill? The Ozark Mountain Regional Solid Waste Management District ? has been trying to sell it for a year to North Arkansas Board of Regional Sanitation, an incorporation of Baxter and Marion counties and the city of Mountain Home. Investment bankers have declined to offer $17 million issue public revenue bonds to finance the transaction.

Ozark Mountain Regional Solid Waste Management District's board of directors voted Tuesday to set a March 13 deadline for the North Arkansas Board of Regional Sanitation proposal and to offer NABORS to other prospective buyers after that date.

"We are extremely opposed to privatizing," Cohee said. "The landfill is in bad enough shape as it is. Privatizing would be total havoc."

Citizens for Clean Water sued ADEQ in 1989 to compel the regulator to require former owners, RLH Inc., to stop leachate observed flowing from the side of a waste storage cell to an area of the landfill not served by a leachate retention pond. That outing resulted in a correction before the issue came to trial. CFCW's legal fee of $11,000, Cohee said.

RLH sold the landfill and a companion hauling service to Northwest Arkansas Regional Solid Waste Management District (now Ozark Mountain Regional Solid Waste Management District) for $12 million on Sept. 1, 2003, after two years of negotiations between RLH and ADEQ regarding ongoing regulatory violations.

On Sept. 23, 2005, the waste management district sought authorization to enlarge the storage area within the 700-acre tract situated 10 miles from Mountain Home's public water intake on Norfork Lake.

Several notices of violation from ADEQ between 2003-05 against RLH were settled early in 2005, with the district and RLH both signing a consent order in which RLH did not concede fault and ADEQ levied a $250,000 fine, then ADEQ's largest fine ever.

The agreement also included a corrective action plan regarding an overfilled area in the landfill which is now a five-year-old correction action plan and the subject of five failed attempts by four engineering firms to correct.

Inspectors in 2005 had found 101 inches of leachate on top of a geo-plastic liner permitted to hold only 12 inches, according to Bulletin archives.

ADEQ also has a $500,000 letter of credit from a bank guaranteeing funds to properly close the offending portion of the landfill should RLH shirk its responsibilities.

NABORS had consumed all of a $1 million line of credit from Arvest Bank when Ozark Mountain Regional Solid Waste Management District took control of the landfill in February 2009 from the Northwest Arkansas Regional Economic Development District.

NABORS finished 2008 with a deficit of $830,000 and lost another $945,000 in 2009.

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Vilappilsala Leachate Treatment by Biomethanation Bound to Fail Long-Term

Existing leachate lagoon - where is the liner?

Nepal is so isolated in so many things, and presumably unable to engage top international advice, that it should engender sympathy for their struggle. Here is another example of that in the area of leachate treatment. They are intending to use Leachate Treatment by Biomethanation, which of course long term won't result in a leachate which is low enough in ammoniacal nitrogen to discharge safely either into a watercourse or even into a sewage works for further treatment. Plus, it won't protect their water supplies at all.

In any event if they have a lined landfill they will get Leachate Treatment by Biomethanation free, within the landfilled waste. They should be collecting the much larger yield of landfill gas from the landfill itself anyway, and if CDM is resurrected, they should be able to get Carbon Credits for that landfill gas to build their LFG extraction project.

They will in the end realise that they must treat their leachate aerobically in order to reduce the highly toxic ammonia component, and although biomethanation is fine if it. In order that you can follow this story I have quoted most of the article below. But, do follow the original article link below for the full story:

The agitation against the Vilappilsala solid waste treatment plant heads to another deadlock, the city Corporation is on a last-minute bid to operationalise a Leachate Treatment Plant (LTP) under construction there.
Leachate from the plant seeping into the nearby Meenambally canal and the resulting ground water pollution in the area has been among the main causes of concern for people of Vilappil panchayat and the Vilappilsala Janakeeya Samithi.
Despite the intensifying agitation and interventions by several authorities, including the Ombudsman for Local Self Government Institutions, the city Corporation has not been able to complete the work on LTP, more than a year after its deadline.
Apart from the 3,500-metre-cube collection tank and anaerobic pond, the construction of six other component tanks of the LTP is yet to be completed. However, instead of waiting for the completion of the whole project, the Corporation is now trying to direct and store leachate in the completed collection tank as a temporary measure to tackle water pollution.
On Monday, a team of engineers and officials from the Kerala Sustainable Urban Development Project (KSUDP) Project Implementation Unit of the Corporation visited the plant to assess how leachate from the accumulated garbage and various other points in the plant can be channelled into the LTP collection tank.
“Construction of the collection tank is over and leachate can now be stored in this tank. From here, it will be directed to the anaerobic pond where bio-methanation of the liquid will take place. The bio-filters in the pond will be installed within a week by which time we will also be laying pipes to channel leachate to the collection tank,” a project engineer said.
He said the bio-methanation process in the anaerobic pond, in its full capacity, will take around 70 days within which period other works on the leachate treatment plant would also be completed.
The LTP coming up at Vilappilsala follows a seven-step treatment method at the end of which the Biological Oxygen Demand in the waste discharge will be brought down to 30 mg per litre from 5,000 mg per litre. Corporation officials now say that the leachate treatment plant will be made fully operational by January, 2012. “Before that, we will solve the issue of water pollution,” said Deputy Mayor G. Happy Kumar.

While Leachate Treatment by Biomethanation will certainly reduce the Biological Oxygen Demand it won't reduce the ammoniacla nitrogen which is essential to remove to below 5 mg/l, and 7 steps seems excessively complicated for any leachate treatment plant. At some point they will need a simple SBR aeration leachate treatment plant of the type I have designed more than 30. (See http://leachate.co.uk for more information.)

Corporation Health Officer D. Sreekumar said the leachate treatment plant coming up at Vilappilsala would only be the second such plant in the country. “Nashik is the only municipality in the country to have an LTP of this magnitude and capacity. The lack of prior experience was also a reason for delay,” he said.

Keywords: Leachate treatment, leachate Treatment by Biomaethanation, agitation, solid waste treatment plant
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A Review of the New 2012 Edition of the "Introduction to Waste Technologies" eBook

New goods and services are continually coming on the web. It's tricky to keep abreast of them all. We become bored with the continuous notices for new releases, often just stop listening to them. Since there's so very little of worth in the majority of offers thrown at us, we become calloused and bored with them, usually just dismiss them all. Often this works O.K for us and saves a lot of time.

Infrequently though, there may be exceptions...

You will find surprising nuggets of value in-between your junk offers. For instance, there's an eBook within the waste technology and Mechanical Biological Treatment ( MBT ) category, named "An Introduction to Waste Technology" that has just been completely updated for 2012 and has just been placed for sale, which shows a lot of value.

It's been dreamed-up and developed by Steve Last, who's now offering it for sale. So let me know, why is it getting attention and gaining a following? Talking generally, what it has been doing currently is gradually selling since it was last updated in 2008.

You will find three unique strengths that make "An Introduction to Waste Technology" stick out from its competition, three principal positive aspects that consumers mention in their many testimonials. These three serious advantages are clear and concise outlines of every one of the main the waste technology and processes used to direct waste away from landfill, a writer who knows his subject and waste treatment process flow charts and tables of pros and cons for each waste technology described. Let's look at each one of these in greater detail.

Read the full review here:

A review of the New 2012 Edition of the "Introduction to Waste Technologies" eBook

or, click here here to go to the sales page.