On July 7, 2020, the City of Brownsville Commission approved a recommendation by the Engineering and Public Works Department to continue an existing multi-year partnership with SCS Engineers. SCS is an environmental consulting and contracting firm that will serve the City for an additional five years. The environmental contracts support the Landfill Gas Collection and Control System (GCCS) expansion and provide landfill engineering, compliance, monitoring and operations assistance.
Project Director, J. Roy Murray, an SCS vice president, and the team’s principal consulting engineer will continue to serve the City’s citizens and staff. Mr. Murray has decades of experience in civil and environmental permitting, design, and construction at municipal solid waste landfills (MSW), including 20 years serving the Brownsville Landfill. Mr. Murray states:
The City staff and Commission continues to entrust SCS Engineers to help the landfill staff with the safe, efficient, and compliant operation of the landfill. We are honored by their trust. The City of Brownsville MSW Landfill Operations team serves the City well. The facility is the primary solid waste disposal site for surrounding communities, carefully engineered and maintained regularly even during severe weather and now a pandemic. The forethought of the Landfill Division, their leadership, and innovative practices provide the citizens with stellar services while protecting the environment.
The initial installation of the City Landfill’s Gas Collection and Control System (GCCS) completed in 2011, was part of an Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant the City received from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. SCS Engineers assisted with the application process, and as a result of the collaboration, the City received a $1.7 million grant to install a landfill gas collection system at the landfill. With GCCS operation, the City has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions. The landfill infrastructure and emission reductions were voluntary at the time, but the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) Air Quality rules and regulations, and EPA’s New Source Performance Standards, now require them.
The Gas Collection and Control System consists of 16 landfill gas extraction wells and currently provides coverage of 32 acres of the City Landfill’s disposal footprint. The City plans to expand the GCCS during 2021, to support landfill’s growth and stricter air permit regulations. The expansion includes 38 additional wells covering 120 acres of the landfill footprint. The new wells will integrate with the collection system and integrate with liquids management, leachate control, and stormwater systems, among others.
About SCS Engineers
SCS Engineers’ environmental solutions and technology are a direct result of our experience and dedication to solid waste management and other industries responsible for safeguarding the environment. For more information about SCS, please follow us on your preferred social media channel, or watch our 50th Anniversary video.
Are You Ready to Respond to a Spill? is Part II of the SCS Engineers SPCC series. Click to read Part I here.
Imagine you get a late-night call informing you that a transformer at one of your substations has failed, and as a result, 8,000 gallons of mineral oil spilled. Your next decisions are critical to timely industrial spill response, and taking the right steps will put you on a path to minimizing the environmental impact and your company’s liability. Do you know how you would respond?
If your facility has over 1,320 gallons of oil, your required SPCC Plan should contain spill response steps. If your facility has less than 1,320 gallons of oil, you may not have written spill response steps at all. Whether or not your facilities have SPCC Plans, consider the following tips, so you’re prepared for that late-night call.
Play Where Will a Spill Go?
If a spill occurs at one of your facilities, do you and your employees know where the spill will go? It’s typically easy to track flow paths at facilities in rural settings, but it can still be tricky if the site is pretty flat. Facilities in urban settings can be much more difficult to track. Sure, the spill will go into that storm sewer inlet 100 feet away from the transformer, but where will it go from there?
Critical hours can be lost during a spill because the response team is pulling manhole lids to determine the path of the spill. A little time spent upfront to determine where a spill would go can save a lot of time and headaches.
So take a peek down that inlet grate to see where the pipe goes. Or give a call to the local municipality. Many have GIS databases mapping the storm sewer system, and they can help determine the correct flow path that a spill would take. Knowing where to deploy your spill response materials is a critical step to spill response.
Conduct a Mock Spill Drill
Try conducting a mock spill drill, so your employees understand your spill response procedures, where you keep spill response materials, and how to deploy those materials. Running through these items on a PowerPoint slide is a good start, but you can’t beat the hands-on activity of actually opening up the spill kit and laying down some boom. A spill drill can also help you identify potential issues with your planned response techniques.
Review Your Spill Kits
Spills kits, especially those stored in maintenance shops, are prone to dwindling inventories over time. While raiding the spill kit to wipe up a few drops of oil isn’t a bad idea, it is important to replenish the spill response materials for an emergency. Make sure your spill kits are stocked by keeping an inventory list taped to the top of the spill kit or just inside the lid. Check the spill kit against the inventory list regularly and replenish missing items. Each spill kit should include personal protective equipment (PPE) appropriate for handling the types and amount of chemicals that the kit is expected to control. PPE should be in good working order. Replace any PPE that is expired or showing wear.
It is also important to understand that absorbent materials come in many styles and work in different ways. Teach your oil-handling employees when to use granular absorbent, or pads and mats, and the proper way to lay booms and socks to prevent spills from seeping through the cracks. If you use “oil-only” absorbents, help employees understand the situations in which these are preferable over a universal absorbent.
Know When You Need to Call for Help
Do you know when you will call for outside spill response assistance versus what your staff can handle internally? The answer can vary by facility type, spill scenario, the experience level of your staff, and spill response materials and equipment that you have available. It’s important to think through different scenarios and know your internal capabilities and limitations, and when you need to call a spill response contractor.
Do you know who you will call? And do you have an agreed-upon response time established with the contractor? Depending on your facility’s location, it could take hours for a spill response contractor to reach the site. Knowing that lag time will help you plan for steps that your internal resources can take until the spill response contractor arrives.
Don’t let spill preparedness slip down your to-do list again. Use these techniques, so you are ready when the next spill occurs.
Jared Omernik has 12 years of experience helping electric utility companies with environmental compliance. Jared has extensive experience helping companies with SPCC compliance and SPCC Plan preparation. For questions about the SPCC Rule or spill response or preparedness, contact Jared at or find the nearest Environmental Engineers on our website.
An American Public Works Association (APWA) publication,
No single waste management approach is suitable for managing all materials and MSW streams in all circumstances. The USEPA hierarchy places emphasis on reducing,
reusing, and recycling as key to sustainable materials management. Citizens and elected officials are often surprised how technically complex solid waste management is, and once aware of the basics they better understand the associated costs. Responsible Solid Waste Management with colorful infographics and easy-to-grasp explanations, helps readers understand solid waste management from beginning to end.
The concept of integrated solid waste management is increasingly being used by states and local governments as they plan for the future. This management practice includes the source reduction of certain MSW streams and the recovery of generated waste for recycling or composting. It also includes environmentally sound management through combustion with energy recovery and landfilling practices that meet current standards or newly emerging waste conversion technologies.
Available on the APWA website or reach Michelle Leonard (co-author) or an MSW engineer nearby contacting SCS Engineers at .
Learn more about Sustainable Materials Management here.
From The Atlantic, Family Section
I, too, had a more-than-passing interest in the garbage truck as a kid; with palpable residual excitement, I can remember peeking through the window shutters of my parents’ front room to watch the vaguely menacing robotic arm jut out, snatch our garbage can, and dangle the can upside down over its back while the trash tumbled out. Why generations of kids have been so transfixed by the trash pickup, though, remains something of a mystery. So I asked parents, kids, child-development experts, waste-management professionals, and even the creator of a kids’ show about an anthropomorphized garbage truck for their insights. Together, we made our way—more aptly, lurched and rumbled our way—toward a unifying theory of why kids are so wild about garbage trucks.
Author ASHLEY FETTERS talks to several experts and the two foremost authorities—kids and garbage-truck drivers. Naturally, we never lost our fascination with the men and women in our industry.
SCS periodically prepares Technical Bulletins to highlight items of interest to our clients and friends who have signed up to receive them. We also publish these on our website at https://www.scsengineers.com/publications/technical-bulletins/.
Our most recent Bulletin summarizes the 2020 USEPA Adds 172 PFAS Chemicals to EPCRA TRI Reporting Program. The new PFAS rule went into effect on June 22, 2020. However, the rule requires PFAS to be included in TRI reports submitted for all 2020 calendar year activity (i.e., January 1 through December 31). The deadline for submitting the 2020 TRI reports is July 1, 2021.
TRI-Covered Industries include:
SCS Engineers will continue to post timely information, resources, and presentations to keep you well informed. These include additional guidance, industry reaction, and webinars for our clients.
Contact https://www.scsengineers.com for an Environmental Engineer near you.
Dr. Gomathy Radhakrishna Iyer joined SCS Engineers in April 2019 as a Staff Professional working out of our Reston, Virginia office. She recently had the honor of delivering a presentation at the Global Waste Management Symposium in February. Learn more about Gomathy and her work as an engineer at SCS:
Tell us about your responsibilities as a Staff Engineer at SCS Engineers.
What attracted you to work at SCS?
What is your favorite part of working at SCS?
What do you feel is your greatest achievement/contribution at SCS?
What was your greatest challenge at SCS, and how did you overcome that?
What advice do you have for students who have recently graduated and are entering the engineering field?
You recently made a presentation at the Global Waste Management Symposium. Tell me more about it, and how did it go?
What are your hobbies outside of SCS?
SCS periodically prepares Technical Bulletins to highlight items of interest to our clients and friends who have signed up to receive them. We also publish these on our website.
Our most recent Bulletin summarizes the 2020 Virginia State Plan for New Landfill EG approved by the USEPA on June 23, 2020.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved a Clean Air Act (CAA) section 111(d) plan submitted by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (VADEQ). This plan was submitted to fulfill the requirements of the CAA and in response to EPA’s promulgation of Emissions Guidelines and Compliance Times for municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills.
The Virginia plan establishes emission limits for existing MSW landfills and provides for the implementation and enforcement of those limits. Highlights of the plan are explained in a newly published SCS Technical Bulletin.
SCS Engineers will continue to post timely information, resources, and presentations to keep you well informed.
Leachate seeps from relatively wet landfills are a fact of life for some operators. Leachate seeps increase in intensity and frequency after a storm, and you’re wondering, how many seeps today; are they reaching the stormwater ditches, detention ponds, or wetlands?
We all deal with daily job challenges, but why not prepare better for this particular problem, given the consequences? Sitting back and waiting for a seep to appear and then scrambling to come up with a solution is obsolete and can be costly.
The timing of handling leachate seeps is as vital as submitting compliance data to regulatory agencies on time. Rapid mitigation of leachate seeps is essential before it turns into a compliance issue and exposing yourself to scrutiny by regulators. We all know that no compliance officer at the corporate office wants to hear from a facility the news of another compliance issue. To get a handle on managing leachate seeps, today’s operator has an arsenal of controls suited for different stages of a landfill’s operation. These controls may vary from the dry season to the wet season, as well.
As the landfill operator, you review the facility operation plan prepared by your engineer from the back to the front to make sure the document addresses all operations. The same document can also include descriptions of seep management controls. You simply request written solutions from your engineer, incorporating controls and guidelines into your operations plan. Your staff now has immediate means to combat the problem following the site operator’s direction using these pre-established guidelines.
With the controls in your facility operations plan, regulatory agencies won’t need to ask for the information. The operations plan has put forward a set of guidelines for the management of leachate seeps in your operations plan, and they became aware of these guidelines during the review of your document submitted to their office as part of intermittent or a renewal submittal. Inspectors are aware that your staff follows the guidelines when necessary; otherwise, non-compliance issues arise. Having an inspector observe a seep closing in on a stormwater ditch isn’t going to do much for your landfill’s standing. The regulators are well-informed and understand leachate seep prevention. They will work with you during the implementation of remediation measures based on the guidelines in the facility operations plan.
A reliable engineer will suggest, even emphasize, these measures to clients. You, as the operator, are not only prepared, but your site engineer and staff are too. Significant unexpected expenses associated with managing leachate seeps are a thing of the past, and inspectors can be confident that your management of leachate control is appropriate.
About the Author: Ali Khatami, Ph.D., PE, LEP, CGC, is a Project Director and a Vice President of SCS Engineers. He is also our National Expert for Landfill Design and Construction Quality Assurance. He has nearly 40 years of research and professional experience in mechanical, structural, and civil engineering.
Learn more at Landfill Engineering
It’s important to make sure we recycle right, not just recycle often! It’s exciting to see all the new products made from the bags and the technology used to sort them – but how individuals’ recycle does matter.
It doesn’t take many plastic bags to get wrapped up in the recycling equipment, causing the equipment to work inefficiently and forcing it to shut down multiple times every day. The facility staff must enter or climb on the screening equipment to cut away bags as in this video.
If you use a plastic bag to collect your recyclables, empty the recyclables into your recycle bin and reuse the bag or recycle it at your grocery or retail store. Don’t mix plastic bottles with plastic bags – that’s what causes safety and efficiency problems in the first place.
Most grocery stores and retail stores such as Walmart, Target, and Lowes have recycling bins for this type of plastic. If you are not reusing the bags, take them to a drop off location, which is probably the same store where you got them.
Find the stores nearest you by visiting this site – a list of all the store drop-off locations in your zip code.
More than just your plastic retail bags can often be recycled, but it’s good to check with your drop-off to see what’s accepted. Examples of what often can be recycled include:
Now, if you are on the other end of the consumer chain and looking to provide a program for your school, community, or solid waste planning area, there is no need to start from scratch! Many other such entities have already developed successful recycling programs and are more than happy to share what they have done. Additionally, end-users in need of this material are also ready and willing to assist with setting up programs, such as the one found here. Plastics wraps, bags, and film may not be going away any time soon, but as long as they are here, there is great reuse for them!
About the Author: Christine Collier is an SCS Senior Project Professional in Des Moines, Iowa. She has over 18 years of experience in the Iowa solid waste industry. She has spent most of her career as both a client and project manager working directly with clients to ensure their projects were being completed on schedule and within budget. Her focus has been on working as a member of the client’s team as an advocate for their best interest. Through her career, she has become an expert in Iowa’s solid waste regulations and compliance requirements. She has BS and MS degrees from Iowa State University in Civil Engineering with an environmental emphasis and is a licensed Iowa Professional Engineer.
Providing a safe work environment is always essential, but never more so than now. Meeting PSM/RMP compliance deadlines, providing ammonia refrigeration operator training, and maintaining critical safety systems are key components in a safe work environment for facility employees.
Safety systems, such as ammonia leak detection systems, must remain operational as required under the following regulatory criteria:
• OSHA 29 CFR 5189, Process Safety Management (PSM) Section (j)(2)(C) Mechanical Integrity
• EPA’s 40 CFR Part 68, Risk Management Program (RMP) Part 68.73
• EPA General Duty Clause
• RAGAGEP – IIAR Standard 6
These criteria require companies to comply with the manufacturer’s recommendations for maintenance and calibration of ammonia detection systems. Calibrating ammonia sensors on a frequency determined in these same recommendations keeps your business compliant. We all know that compliance is non-negotiable as the ammonia detection system is a life-safety device.
Dedicating itself to providing a variety of online training and virtual meetings, the SCS Tracer Environmental team ensures your systems meet all regulatory obligations. When site visits are necessary; our teams and your facility members use a CDC-based safety protocol meeting state and local requirements, and facility requirements.
For assistance with ammonia sensor calibrations, please contact Mark Carlyle.
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