An open dump refers to a land disposal site where solid waste is disposed of in a manner that does not protect the environment, is susceptible to open burning, and is exposed to the elements, vectors, and scavengers. Therefore, closing or upgrading open dumps to a sanitary landfill is a key issue for many communities worldwide.
In 1976, the passage of U.S. federal legislation known as RCRA pushed for the closure of open dumps and encouraged the development of modern sanitary landfills. In the 1990s, the U.S. EPA issued rules implementing such requirement. As a result, thousands of open dumps were closed.
The informative brochure “Closing Dumpsites,” is intended for many countries that are now beginning down the path to closing them with basic information of the process. Although U.S. dumps have been closed for many years with SCS providing post-closure and long-term care of these facilities, other countries can learn more about the long-term management of these facilities from our professionals nationwide by contacting us at .
ISWA World Congress 2018 will feature a comprehensive scientific program highlighting the socio-economic impacts of waste recycling, waste reduction, and health, safety and policy regulation pertaining to recycling and climate change. It will also include areas of current interest such as marine and coastal waste management.
Please join SCS Engineers at one of these sessions, we always look forward to visiting and exchanging ideas with our ISWA colleagues.
DAY 1
Join Moderator David Ross at the session Sustainable Consumption and Waste Management in Developing Countries. This session is in Conference Hall 3, Level 3, on Monday, October 22. The presentation begins at 1130.
Or, join Presenter Bob Dick for Technological Innovation in Solid Waste Management Meeting for his presentation of a case study on Quarry Landfill Permitting. This presentation examines the application to productively use former quarry sites and avoid landfill development on greenfield sites. This strategic session is in meeting room 304, on Monday, October 22. The presentation begins at 1130.
You may choose to join Moderator James Law for the Climate Change and Landfills
This strategic session is in meeting room 304, on Monday, October 22. The presentation also begins at 1130, in meeting room 306, Level 3.
Join Moderator Dr. Fangmei Zhang at the session Closing Dumpsites and Marine Litter. Dr. Zhang will also present a case study on the Technical Challenges of Closing Old
Dumpsites for Redevelopment. Jose Luis Davila in the same session will present a case study on the San Cristobal Open Dump Conversion to an Engineered Landfill. These informative sessions are in meeting room 304, on Monday, October 22. The presentation begins at 1400.
DAY 2
ISWA Working Group on Landfill Closing Dumpsites
Keynote Session with Moderator James Law at 0830 am Conference Hall 3, Level 3.
ISWA Consortium of Working Groups – Landfill, Climate Change, and Waste Management
Climate Benefits
A Keynote Session with presentations by James Law and Alex Stege at 0930 in Conference Hall 3, Level 3. This forum includes ISWA Task Force on Closing Dumpsites and Evaluating the Effects of Closing Open Dumps on Greenhouse Gas Emissions.
Climate Change and Landfills will take place in meeting room 306, Level 3 at 1600. James Law will present Addressing Slope Failures and Fires at Major Landfills – A Case Study of
Ghazipur Landfill in Delhi, India.
DAY 3
Improving Air Quality and Mitigating Climate Change through Better Waste Management, Bob Dick will present Landfill Operations to Maximize
Landfill Gas Recovery in Conference Hall 3, Level 3 at 1030.
DAY 4
Post Conference Workshop on Landfill Dumpsite Stability by James Law at 1550 through 1630.
Senate Bill-1383 is California legislation establishing aggressive organics recycling targets. Other states are establishing their own goals, some with enforcement components. It is up to municipalities to secure processing capacity and to implement comprehensive organics diversion programs to meet these goals.
Tracie Onstad Bills and Lisa Coelho, both with SCS Engineers, explain how one solid waste authority known as RecycleSmart, is proactively seeking to tackle the tough questions pertaining to new regulation compliance. RecycleSmart’s stance is proactive, they began to research and review their organics programs last year and have been working simultaneously during the formation of the regulations. By doing so, they have given themselves time to establish a direction for compliance and time to provide the public outreach and education necessary for a smooth transition.
Read “Shifting Focus,” an article published in Waste Today detailing the Central Contra Costa Solid Waste Authority’s study and six integrated programs that will provide the direction they need to help six Northern California municipalities make the right infrastructure and programmatic investments to attain the goals.
Learn more about Organics Management and Integrated Solid Waste Management.
Tracie Onstad Bills and Lisa Coelho are the Northern California director and sustainable materials management specialist, respectively, for SCS Engineers. Please feel free to contact us if you have comments or questions about organics program planning and management at .
Ann O’Brien helps industrial and agricultural companies stay abreast of the regulatory information necessary to remain compliant with federal and state policies. Ann’s most recent series of articles for businesses in the printing or agricultural industries provides advice on air permits and the need for addressing the limits on visible emissions likely specified in their air permits.
Here’s what you need to know about what visible emissions are, how they’re regulated, and how to stay in compliance with your air permit. For other industries, please feel free to contact any SCS office or email us at service.scsengineers.com. We provide our professional services nationwide.
The transformation of Fresh Kills from the largest landfill in the world to one of the city’s biggest and brightest park systems can serve as a model for other municipalities during the postclosure landfill planning process. Creative reuses of landfills can be critical in the quest to add ecological functions and amenities to urban regions. When determining the redesign for a landfill, cities could benefit from a similar master planning process informed by community input. With public tours, research and art projects, Freshkills is an example of how multifaceted the reclamation can be.
Eloise Hirsh, Freshkills park administrator for NYC Parks quote in recent Waste Today article by Adam Redling. Read the full article here.
Other beautiful parks include:
Thanks to you, SCS Engineers has received awards and industry recognition for research achievements and technology innovations. These honors have come to us from such organizations as SWANA, NWRA, and many other engineering and environmental organizations. Recently SCS Engineers achieved three Design-Build rankings in the 2018 ENR Top 400 Environmental Build and Top 500 Environmental Sourcebooks.
SCS ranks highly in both Design-Build for these environmental categories:
We are grateful to you and will continue striving to bring you the most value with every environmental solution. Thank you.
The Association of Plastic Recyclers announced the development of the “APR Plastic Sorting Best Management Practices Guide,” to encourage the standardization of data collected during waste characterization studies. The Plastic Sorting BMPs are intended to help the solid waste industry better understand the different types of plastic materials in the current recycling stream for comparison, to develop trending data, and to improve the industry’s knowledge about the composition of plastic waste by expanding on the current methodology. The BMP’s do not change any categories but add clarity to the existing categories that could provide more insight because the industry is naming, dividing, and sorting consistently.
Municipalities and states regularly sort their waste and recycling streams, but there is not a consistent use of terminology and categorization used by all. The BMPs define plastic sorting categories by resin and form, with categories aligning with plastic recycling commodities traded after sorting at MRFs. The terminology aligns with annual plastic recycling tracking.
APR’s standards place plastics into five categories:
Three sorting levels provide flexibility on how extensive a study is necessary. For example, PET, HDPE natural and HDPE color are common plastic commodities nationwide; almost every recycling program is recycling the sub-categories in Level 1. While Levels 2 and 3 add more sub-categories so that the solid waste and recycling industry and municipal policies, that will always vary somewhat, will find the BMPs useful.
With the tonnage of waste increasing every year and the challenges of National Sword policies, it is more important than ever to collect data consistently to improve recovery and understand the volume of specific types of plastics to make the appropriate capital investments in infrastructure.
The solid waste industry is positioning itself to meet increased demand and enhance the quality while suppliers consider how to adapt their packaging for a future of greater recycling and reuse. Municipalities can identify more easy-to-regulate commodities for increasing commodity sales.
Quoted recently in Resource Recycling, Stacey Demers of SCS Engineers explained that standardization is a great idea to help municipalities know the percentage of recyclable plastics in their waste stream and what their program needs to target later on.
Meet SCS Engineers professionals at the 2018 Iowa Recycling and Solid Waste Management Conference and Trade Show, October 8-10 at the Mid-America Center in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
Registration for this event is open. We hope to visit with you at SCS’s booth 104. Earn CEUs at these conference sessions.
To generate a return on investment of site-specific GCCS, you need OMM staff who understand the strengths and weaknesses of your site. From that understanding, successful OMM teams and facility owners can design, perform, and fine-tune their program.
SCS’s BMP’s uses a “beyond the compliance OMM model” because the practice leads to strengthening relationships with regulatory agencies and LFG energy providers. Our clients expect to move toward a field optimization program when both OMM procedures and regulatory requirements are fine-tuned to work in concert. That investment pays dividends by increasing compliance and improving gas recovery. When developed OMM principles are defined clearly, and evolved along with GCCS design and construction, teams rise to the challenge, and the reward is a consistent track record of excellent GCCS operation.
Part 1 of the series discusses design considerations for landfill gas collection and control systems (GCCS); Part 2 takes into account construction quality assurance (CQA) measures during construction of GCCS; and Part 3 covers BMP’s for GCCS Operation, Monitoring, and Maintenance (OMM) in the September/October issue of MSW Magazine. The SCS Team covers:
A federal appeals court ruled that the Obama administration’s rule to regulate coal ash does not go far enough in some areas. However, the court did not give environmentalists everything they were seeking. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit’s Aug. 21 decision in the case, Utility Solid Waste Activities Group v. EPA gave neither side all it wanted.
The decision comes as the Trump administration seeks to revise the EPA’s 2015 rule intended to regulate coal combustion residuals (CCR) from coal-fired power plants—one of the largest waste streams in the U.S. In July, the EPA issued a final rule granting more flexibility to industry and states. Both the Obama and Trump administrations have sought to give states the ability to create their own standards, but according to the D.C. Circuit, neither set of rules satisfied the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act–a 1976 law that allows the federal government to regulate solid waste generation, storage and disposal.
In its ruling, the court agreed that the EPA erred when it failed to mandate unlined CCR surface impoundments be closed, and when it exempted inactive impoundments from the regulation. The court also ruled that EPA should not have classified clay-lined impoundments as being lined.
The court also ruled against industry groups. For example, it determined that EPA does have the authority to regulate inactive impoundments and that it did provide enough public notice that it intended to apply aquifer-location criteria to existing impoundments.
The court also found that EPA decision to prohibit certain unencapsulated beneficial uses of CCR in amounts 12,400 tons or greater was arbitrary and remanded that decision to the EPA. The Agency had previously acknowledged the error in setting the 12,400 ton threshold (the threshold using the Agency’s methodology should have been about 75,000 tons).
Several industry publications have provided coverage of the decision and reaction from industry leaders, including E&E News, APPA, Utility Dive, Engineering News Record, and Courthouse News Service.
For questions or more information, please contact SCS Engineers’ staff.
