Friday, December 03, 2010

Brookhaven Town to Send 9 Million Gallons of Leachate Per Year to Resource ... - Patch

Steve Bossotti, Covanta’s Vice President, Supervisor Mark Lesko and Rick Sandner, Covanta’s Vice President Regional Business Manager. Town of Brookhaven

Earlier in the month, the City of Brookhaven voted collectively on a resolution moved to modify a community solid waste and ash disposal agreement with Covanta Hempstead Company.

The plan allows them them to accept and transport roughly 9,000,000 gallons of leachate each year from the Brookhaven City Rubbish heap . Covanta incinerates borough solid waste to generate salable electricity and will use the leachate as "slaking water" to extinguish ash residue so it's no longer capable of combustion or ignition, according to the City . The move will save Brookhaven virtually $500,000 over the next 4 years, Supervisor Mark Lesko said. "I advocate our waste product management team for doing such an excellent job in building more strategies for the city to save cash during these tricky business times," he added.

Leachate is liquid that moves thru or drains from a landfill.

The most typical source is rainwater filtering down thru the landfill. This liquid is treated in the same way to sewage, and then safely released into the environment. According to the city officers, the Brookhaven Dump produces between 18,000,000 tons and twenty-seven million tons of leachate a year on account of the standard operation of the rubbish heap and Covanta Hempstead has found it's of acceptable quality to "slake" ash during its resource recovery process. "The Brookhaven Dump serves as an example across the industry of how a waste product management facility can be run more effectively and with the smallest amount of result on the environment ".

 Councilman Tim Mazzei said. "We have the largest municipal landfill site on Long Island and it's important that we continue to lead the way."

The program also helps Convanta.

"The leachate will be utilized at our Hempstead energy-from-waste facility and consequently cut our annual usage of ground water by an equivalent amount," said Rick Sandner, Vice President Regional Business Manager of Covanta. "Good for the Town, good for us and good for the environment."

The Town of Brookhaven accepts post combustion ash, and other non-hazardous materials into its landfill from various companies and this year will receive over 217,000 tons of post combustion ash residue from Covanta Hempstead.

The revenue that the Town of Brookhaven will derive from the company for accepting ash in 2010 is expected to exceed $11.5 million, Town officials said.

View the original article here

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