Dust Control – Soil Stabilization – Erosion Control

Archive for the ‘leachate’ Category

Releasing the National Compliance Enforcement Report in Pretoria, she pointed out that this decrease in convictions is a cause for concern, particularly in light of the increase in the total number of criminal dockets registered during the year under review.

But she pointed out that many cases have experienced substantial delays within the prosecution system, confirming the urgent need for dedicated courts to deal with these types of cases.

Nevertheless the report cheered her up by saying that the number of acquittals dropped from 441 in the previous year to 18.

A total of 4,661 environmental cases were reported nationally for the year to the end of March 2009. During this period the total number of criminal dockets registered was 2,412 compared with 1,762 in the previous reporting period.

The total amount of money raised by admission of guilt fines nearly doubled from 2007/08 from 744,706 rand to approximately 1.4 million rand in 2008/09.

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Ontario’s environmental watchdog has urged the province to shut down a controversial, 55-year-old garbage dump in Napanee.

The Ministry of Environment should immediately order the closing of the controversial Richmond Landfill site, Gord Miller, Ontario’s Environmental Commissioner, recommends in his annual report, released yesterday (tues).

"The (commissioner) believes that there are compelling environmental reasons for (the ministry) to require the immediate, orderly closure of the site and no compelling social or economic reasons for continuing to keep it open," Miller states, in the report.

The site is operated by Waste Management of Canada. Spokesman Wes Muir, reached yesterday afternoon in Toronto, said he could not comment.

"We haven’t had a chance to review the report at this time and we’ll be providing comment at a later date," Muir said.

In 2006, the Ministry of the Environment rejected Waste Management’s bid to expand the landfill so that it could accept up to 750,000 tonnes of trash annually.

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Bad weather may delay completion of Freeport’s landfill closure

A recent spell of rainy weather may derail efforts to complete Freeport’s landfill project prior to the arrival of winter.

Sue Grans, spokesperson for William Charles Construction, said Wednesday the contractor remains optimistic about finishing the project this fall. However, Grans acknowledged recent weather has put the project’s completion in jeopardy.

“We feel comfortable that we are on schedule,” Grans said. “But the rain has not helped and the days are getting shorter.”

William Charles Construction is the project’s primary contractor. However, the closure effort includes the City of Freeport, engineering firm Fehr-Graham & Associates, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Ben Bushman, project manager for Fehr-Graham, said Thursday he expects the majority of the landfill’s cover system to be completed this fall. However, contractors may struggle to establish the necessary “grass cover.”

“All of the earth moving will be complete this fall,” Bushman said. “Everything else is weather dependent, primarily the seeding.”

The vegetation, Bushman explained, serves more than an aesthetic purpose.

“If we cannot get adequate grass cover, we will run the risk of erosion, mainly due to the spring thaw,” he said.

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The Ontario Environmental Commissioner’s recommendation to close the Richmond Landfill Site immediately is “disappointing” for the company that operates the Napanee-area dump.

Wes Muir, director of communications for Waste Management, said the recommendation contained in Gord Miller’s annual report came as a surprise to his company. The site, he said, has active certificates of approval issued by the Ministry of the Environment.

“We were disappointed the environmental commissioner chose not to contact us to discuss this matter with us,” Muir said. “The Ministry of the Environment objected an opposition group’s request to close the site. What they came back with late last year is that our landfill is in accordance with its certificates of approval and … the ministry inspects our site for compliance.”

Muir said the monitoring looks into ground and surface water as well as air quality. Results indicate the site is safe, he said.

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State authorities are suing Bonzi Sanitation Landfill for millions of dollars needed to close it by early 2011.

The troubled landfill, at 2650 W. Hatch Road, west of Carpenter Road, also must correct groundwater contamination threatening the drinking water of 300 people in the Riverdale Park neighborhood three miles southwest of Modesto, California Attorney General Jerry Brown demands in the lawsuit.

“These people have really been able to skirt, duck and evade their obligations,” said Cris Carrigan, senior staff counsel with the state Water Resources Control Board, which has been on Bonzi’s tail for more than 20 years. “It’s gotten to the point where the board just didn’t think we had any other recourse (than to sue).”

Also, Riverdale Park residents this week received notices to boil water before drinking it for reasons unrelated to the landfill. Water in distribution lines has high levels of bacteria, a relatively common problem that could be corrected in a few days or less, a Stanislaus County official said. Read the rest of this entry »

NORRISTOWN — A modified closure plan for the Pottstown Landfill, located in West and Upper Pottsgrove, has been approved by the Department of Environmental Protection, according to a press release issued Tuesday.

The approved plan, submitted by Waste Management Disposal Services Inc. in 2008, includes the revisions proposed by the DEP in technical review and those made by the closure committee made up of Pottstown area officials

Among the revisions to the closure plan that Waste Management voluntarily adopted are a more frequent testing of methane gas stacks, periodic review of leachate flow from the landfill and enhanced security of the site, according to the Department of Environmental Protection.

To view the comment and response document put together by the DEP after the July 2007 public hearing on the closure plan,

visit http://www.depweb.state.pa.us">www.depweb.state.pa.us and search for Pottstown Landfill.

The Cornejo & Sons construction and demolition landfill in south Wichita could grow two acres to the south under a permit application being examined by the state.

City zoning maps already assumed the area would be used as landfill.

But some city officials said they were caught off-guard by the proposed expansion because the council voted in April to cap the trash pile near its current height and have it close by Dec. 31, 2010. The height and closure date wouldn’t change.

Zoning for the two-acre expansion has been approved for years, but it was not widely discussed in April, when officials focused on the height of the trash pile.

Officials with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment will explain the proposed landfill expansion and record public comments at 6 p.m. Sept. 30 at Jardine Middle School, 3550 Ross Parkway.

Vice Mayor Jim Skelton said the city probably can’t block the expansion, even though he would like to.

"KDHE needs to consider declining this permit because he has a bad record of complying with regulations," he said. "That’s a valid reason to decline the permit."

City and state inspectors have documented several violations of landfill regulations at the Cornejo site, 3299 Southeast Blvd. In February, a city environmental official reviewed state records and recommended the city not approve any expansion.

"Over 70 percent of the violations are recurring indicating that the facility cannot or will not comply with past inspection citations," a memo from the official said.

Ron Cornejo, co-owner of Cornejo & Sons, said the landfill did not have environmental problems and questioned where Skelton got his information.

"We don’t have any environmental issues," he said.

Kay Johnson, director of the city’s Environmental Services Department, said in an e-mail that city officials have not reviewed the state application. But also said that she understood that KDHE would develop a permit consistent with what council members approved.**

The Cornejo landfill has irritated people who live near it for years because trash and dirt blow into their neighborhoods. Cornejo employees have routinely gone out to pick up trash and have tried to cut down on the litter.

Neighborhood complaints grew earlier this year when The Eagle reported that the trash mound had grown about 60 feet beyond its permitted height.

City officials said it would probably do more harm than good to remove the debris, and council members approved a plan to cap the landfill close to its current height.

Some neighborhoods have noticed a dirt mound atop the waste pile. Cornejo confirmed that the mound was put there in preparation to close that part of the landfill.

The new 2-acre site would handle additional waste, then be closed at the end of 2010.

"This is the final step," he said.

EUGENE, Ore.–  Federal law requires Lane County to put a cap on the landfill when it’s full.  But that’s not expected to be until 2087.

But, to reduce methane gas, the county is putting a cap on one portion of the landfill now.

A 16-acre parcel, filled with more than a million and a half tons of garbage, will be covered with a foot and a half layer of clay, followed by a thick plastic covering.

The project costs two million dollars, all of which is paid for by fees Lane County collected from solid waste disposal.

They should have called SCI and capped it for much less.

MAPLE CITY — A green energy effort is under way at a Leelanau County landfill, a site with a history of pollution problems.

Waste Management is harnessing methane gas to power new technology at its Glen’s Landfill in Maple City, a system that reduces wastewater runoff and the number of trucks on the road. The effort will save the company money and reduce the toll on the environment.

A new system to evaporate leachate — rainwater that runs over garbage — is powered by about half the landfill’s captured gas emissions. The other half is still burned off with flares.

The idea is to reduce leachate by steaming off water and creating a concentrated leachate product that can go back into the landfill to aid garbage decomposition. Leachate formerly was trucked to Frankfort for treatment, so the effort reduces both company costs and the number of heavy trucks on the road, company officials said.

"This internalizes everything," said Jim Palmer, the company’s district manager.

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality approved the new technology, but did not require it, said Scott Conradson, a senior environmental engineer with the state agency.

The Maple City landfill had two leachate spills in March due to operator error during truck-loading, incidents that brought citations and a nearly $30,000 DEQ fine, Conradson said. The new leachate evaporation system should help prevent future spills, he said.

Palmer agreed.

"That’s the whole problem with trucking stuff," he said. "It’s an upgrade."

The evaporator cost about $2 million, but will stave off leachate transportation and treatment costs. It went online in late June and already processed 1.6 million gallons of leachate.

The landfill generates about 40,000 gallons of leachate daily and about 950 cubic feet of gas per minute, Palmer said.

Waste Management’s new leachate evaporator system is better for the environment, Conradson said, but the effort is spurred by economics and not environmentalism.

"They are in the business to make money and this will save them money," Conradson said. "It’s purely financial."

Conradson said the landfill is well operated under Waste Management, though the site caused groundwater contamination under a previous owner.

Now all 13 Lower Michigan landfills owned by Waste Management use landfill gas to generate energy.

In yet another controversial development in the case of the Tennessee coal ash spill, the millions of pounds of ash are being shipped from the accident site to a landfill in a poor county in Alabama.

The Great Coal Ash Transfer
The New York Times paints a pretty evocative picture of what’s going on:

Almost every day, a train pulls into a rail yard in rural Alabama, hauling 8,500 tons of a disaster that occurred 350 miles away to a final resting place, the Arrowhead Landfill here in Perry County, which is very poor and almost 70 percent black.

Which is pretty awful at first glance–a comparatively wealthy community shipping its mess far south for a much poorer one to take care of. But as the Times points out, community leaders in Perry County actually jumped at the chance to tend to the coal ash problem, for purely economic reasons: it’s creating 30 jobs in a county that has 17% unemployment, and it’s adding $3 million to a county budget that previously had only $4.5 million.

Is the Coal Ash Containment Environmentally Sound?
And then there’s this: (from the Times)

Even environmentalists acknowledge that the site, in Perry County, is in many ways ideal. Most of the problems from coal ash, which contains toxins like arsenic and lead that have contaminated the water supply at more than 60 sites nationwide, come from wet, unlined ponds like the one that ruptured in Tennessee. It is far better, environmentalists say, that the ash should go somewhere like Arrowhead, a dry storage site dug into a nearly impermeable bed known as the Selma chalk, some 600 feet above the water table, lined with clay and polymer and equipped with a leachate collection system to suck up any water that filters through the ash and dislodges contaminants.

So it seems like a win-win situation (as much as dealing with millions of yards of toxic ash spill can be anyhow). Perry County gets an economic boost, and the ash spill gets safely tucked away.

Or Does It?
But many residents don’t see it that way, and have lingering concerns about water safety, regulations, and a lack of trust with the officials in charge of the operation. They said they "feared equipment failure, flooding, tornadoes or lack of oversight at the landfill, where the Alabama Department of Environmental Management, whose notably lax regulation of coal ash permits most landfills to use it as a cover material for other waste." And opponents of the landfill have noted that there are at least 212 homes within a mile and a half from the landfill.

“I won’t feel comfortable,” wrote W. Compson Sartain, a columnist for The Perry County Herald, “until I see a delegation from E.P.A. and T.V.A. standing on the courthouse square, each member stirring a heaping spoonful of this coal ash into a glass of Tennessee river water this stuff has already fallen into, and gargling with it.”

But it looks like Sartain won’t get his demonstration–the great coal ash transfer from Tennessee to Perry County is already well under way.