LANDFILLS
The importance of PROPERLY DESIGNED and constructed landfills Regardless of where we live, work, or play, we generate waste. To ensure our waste doesn’t harm public health or the environment, modern landfills are technically sophisticated and highly regulated. These landfills are commonly referred to as ‘municipal solid waste landfills’ to distinguish them from the open dumps of the past. By Stan Jewaskiewitz*
Construction of modern state-of-the-art landfill with waste acceptance controls, geosynthetic lining systems and leachate collection/management system
(Courtesy of the Wizard of Id)
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nlike old dumps, modern landfills have sophisticated protective liners, leachate collection systems, groundwater monitoring, gas collection equipment, and environmental reporting requirements. Waste disposal is still, in many cases, carried out by dumping. Such dumpsites are often characterised by: • indiscriminately dumped heaps of uncovered wastes, which are sometimes burning • pools of standing, polluted water • rat and fly infestations • feral and domesticated animals roaming freely • where pover ty is rife, families of scavengers picking through the wastes. Such dumpsites are usually (but not always) outside the urban areas of towns,
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located in areas not suitable for any other purpose. The reasons that such conditions are accepted are varied and numerous, but may be summed up as: • ignorance (of the health risks associated with dumping of wastes), or acceptance of the status quo, due to: – lack of financial resources to do anything better – lack of political will to protect and improve public health and the environment. A transition from open dumping to sanitar y landfilling would include intermediate stages that might be described as: • designated dumping (within a designated site, but with no control of operations) • controlled tipping (in a supervised site,
with wastes disposed of in an organised manner, in layers and covered periodically) • engineered landfilling (where the impact of wastes on the environment has been assessed and engineering measures taken to limit, but not necessarily eliminate, such impacts). Progression from one such ‘standard’ of operation to the next requires significant increases in technical competence at the local/site level and in financial resources to sustain it. There are oppor tunities for incremental improvements at ever y stage of development of a waste disposal site: from its initial siting, through design, construction and operation, to site closure and aftercare.
