Suzanne Sturgeon is the Health and Safety (H&S) Program Manager for SCS Engineers staff working in the field. Suzanne is responsible for developing and implementing safety programs, policies, procedures, and regulations. She also manages H&S training for field staff, developing and conducting cultural-based training within SCS to promote understanding and participation while encouraging a behavior-based philosophy essential to eliminating unsafe practices and conditions.
Suzanne doesn’t stop there; she continually evolves her programs and participates in association speaking opportunities to share successful strategies throughout North America at Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA) events and others. Her focus has been proactively identifying hazardous landfill and landfill gas situations and presenting unique and successful solutions she has developed for SCS. But, as the number of MRFs and Transfer Stations is expected to increase, those areas have become safety focus areas.
The industry is seeing a reduction in workplace fatalities based on the most recent U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, but there is more work to do. “Solid waste is a dangerous industry, and we collectively work to bring awareness to those most vulnerable to injury or worse,” said Sturgeon. “As an industry, we have the tools and more on-demand training to help reach more workers before problems occur to continue making our industry safer.”
As the SWANA National Safety Committee Chair, Suzanne is working hard and smart in the field, keeping up with new systems, equipment, and facilities that need her particular skills and insight to keep worker fatalities and injuries on the downward trend. Her innovative training and ability to communicate with so many saves lives.
Greg McCarron, PE, is a Vice President of SCS Engineers and the firm’s expert on Organics Management. Greg supports businesses and municipalities across the U.S. taking steps to address climate change, which many consider the most important challenge facing our planet. One popular option is reducing greenhouse gas and their environmental impacts by diverting organics from landfills, thus reducing methane production. The tactic also diverts much-needed food to food banks in some programs, but all programs produce a product good for the earth.
Greg’s 35 years of experience include operations, project management, design, permitting, regulatory support, construction oversight, system start-up, economic analysis, and technology assessment to find the right system and the proper mix for sustainable composting operations.
Among his successful innovative projects, there are award winners for demonstrating composting operations can be in urban areas, conveniently coexisting with buildings and people, even tucked under a bridge in New York City.
He created an Aerated Static Pile (ASP) composting pilot program so that municipalities and businesses could evaluate their organic waste streams to determine whether composting is a viable solution before making a capital investment.
And he is leading the design of hybrid composting approaches that combine an ASP system with other technologies, such as open windrows. These hybrid systems can achieve necessary process control while maintaining cost efficiencies. The designs depend on the priority challenges unique to each project — processing increasing tons of food scraps, for example, but change as priorities differ within programs. Sustainability means the systems are flexible enough to adapt to waste trends and the end market, which demands various high-quality mixes to sell.
Greg says, “the advancements mentioned above help support sustainable composting and organics management because they account for changes that may occur over the life of the systems, such as waste characteristics and their relation to the end-product demand.”
Solid waste facility operators and municipalities looking to invest in organic waste management strategies have plenty to consider to pinpoint the option with the greatest payoffs. And now is the time to better manage organics, with methane becoming front and center in climate change discussions and states enacting organics diversion requirements.
There is a robust menu, then submenus, of methods and technologies to explore when evaluating organics waste management. The one which makes the most sense will be very site- and or location-specific. It depends on how you manage waste now and its impact on your current environmental footprint. It hinges on each management system’s capabilities, from controlling different emission types to energy generation (or avoiding energy consumption), depending on which capabilities are most relevant to your goals. While these are core considerations, there are more layers to dig through in each situation.
Let’s look at several well-established organics management options and analyze them side by side. We’ll explore composting, anaerobic digestion (AD), and direct combustion, aka biomass-to-energy, looking at outcomes an SCS Engineers team evaluated using computer models and various analytical tools.
As we begin the vetting process, be prepared to think about tradeoffs. For instance, the approach with the best greenhouse gas (GHG) profile may not perform as well with air pollutants like nitrogen oxides (NOx) or volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Suppose you are recovering landfill gas (LFG) for energy. There will be considerations here too, with regard to gains and losses, as diverting organic waste away from a LFG to energy project can reduce benefits you already enjoy.
The first question to ask is whether to divert organics from landfills at all. This is where we narrow in on GHGs. How you currently collect LFG and whether you convert it into energy will result in a huge differential.
So, it’s important to know your baseline emission numbers when considering your options to understand better your current carbon footprint and your baseline emissions of other pollutants. Both will significantly affect your analysis and help inform your decision.
Let’s look at three different landfill scenarios, considering both GHG emissions and whether energy is recovered or avoided. These each involve the management of 1,000,000 tons of organic waste.
How does knowing these metrics affect your investment decision?
First, let’s revisit the third landfill scenario – the operation with extremely well-controlled emissions that converts methane from organics using LFG to energy technology.
Diverting organics over landfilling, in this case, will gain much smaller emissions benefits compared to uncontrolled landfills or landfills with LFG capture systems that are not as robust. Plus, when you divert the organic waste, depending on the system, you lose a portion of that energy source to make power or fuel in the future. The landfill will generate less methane, eliminating some of the existing benefits you realize while decreasing the value of your energy recovery plant. Spending $10 million to $30 million on a plant to compost or anaerobically digest organic materials, a reasonable estimate depending on facility type and size, may not provide sufficient benefit to justify adopting either technology when you consider the loss in LFG to energy value and investment.
Conversely, if waste goes to a site with no gas collection system, organics diversion of any kind will perform exceedingly better in terms of emissions. At the top of the list of payouts: organics diversion methods can create a huge amount of GHG benefits.
Let’s analyze the options, beginning with composting (there are several possibilities within this one space).
Sizing up composting options
One commonality among all compost options differentiating them from other diversion methods is the benefit of carbon sequestration. Capturing carbon and storing it in the soil drives additional GHG benefits beyond the reduced energy consumption (less irrigation and avoided commercial fertilizer manufacturing). At the same time, AD has limited sequestration benefits, and biomass-to-energy has none. Keep this in mind if you need to improve your GHG profile.
There are three main composting methods, each with different emissions outcomes:
Open windrow composting involves mechanically turning piles to aerate them and break down the feedstock. But without an enclosure or controls, it provides no means to prevent VOC, ammonia, and other emissions.
Comparing the landfill scenarios detailed above, an open windrow composting facility without controls can emit 2,125 (green waste) tons of VOCs to 5,000 (green plus food waste) tons of VOCs for every 1,000,000 tons of throughput.
Windrow composting operations can also produce GHG emissions in the form of methane when aeration is not sufficient via mechanical means and some anaerobic degradation occurs. This is a bigger problem for food waste composting because of the faster degradation of organic materials.
You can add operational controls to windrows through forced aeration (aerated static piles). This method involves pumping air through the pile to speed up the composting process, which substantially reduces methane formation, reduces VOCs to a degree, and provides better odor control. Additionally, because throughput moves quicker, the operation requires less space.
Comparing to open windrow composting with no controls, VOC emissions are reduced to 978 (green waste) tons of VOCs to 2,300 (green plus food waste) tons of VOCs for each every 1,000,000 tons of throughput, a reduction of greater than 50%.
The next method, CASP, yields better outcomes by adding a control system to an aerated pile system. There are three main CASP options:
Each of these control technologies is similar in terms of VOC emission reductions. And when deployed in the example scenarios I just described, VOC emissions are reduced to 50 (green waste) tons to 75 (green plus food waste) tons for every 1,000,000 tons of throughput— a reduction greater than 95% compared to open windrows.
GHG benefits from composting range from -228,000 to -396,000 MTCO2e (-958,000 to 1.13 million MTCO2e when including sequestration)—even greater depending on the avoided landfill methane scenarios we reviewed.
The main takeaways on composting are:
How does anaerobic digestion fare?
With AD, organics break down in enclosed vessels or reactors. Biogas comes out in one direction, and residuals exit through the other. Because AD happens in an enclosure, emissions are easier to control than when composting.
The ability to make renewable natural gas (RNG) is perhaps the greatest benefit that distinguishes this technology from composting. And the gas has higher methane content with fewer impurities than renewable biogas from landfill gas, adding to its value.
The federal government offers good subsidies for RNG-derived transportation fuel in the form of renewable identification numbers (RINs), which are credits used for compliance. California and Oregon issue low-carbon credits for RNG used for transportation fuel at the state level, and other states are exploring implementing similar programs. So, investing in AD can be lucrative now.
Some caveats: the AD systems require more energy to run and are more expensive on a dollar-per-ton basis than composting. There are building costs and reactors. You also have to pre-process material to a greater degree, so it’s more involved than composting.
And while producing RNG for transportation fuel reduces emissions significantly, burning the biogas in engines for electricity creates additional combustion emissions.
AD has a better GHG profile than composting when excluding carbon sequestration but not as good when including sequestration. And AD has much lower VOC emissions than composting because of its generally closed-loop design.
So, ask yourself if improving GHG emissions while achieving robust energy recovery are your top priorities. This is where you could cash in if you choose to make RNG leveraging AD, and if you are able and willing to make the additional capital and operational investment over composting.
The nitty-gritty of biomass-to-energy (direct combustion)
This option, entailing direct burning of solid organics, has the highest energy value and thus the greatest GHG profile if excluding sequestration.
While AD yields energy only from a certain portion of organics, and composting creates no direct energy (only energy offsets), you get energy from all of it when you burn organics. That’s because you are using the entire feedstock in the combustion process.
Here’s the drawback: there are more air pollution emissions with biomass-to-energy, especially NOx, as well as other combustion byproducts.
Technologies to control emissions are improving, and burning organics is cleaner than burning municipal solid waste. But biomass-to-energy is only a likely option if there is a strong need for electricity or there is very limited space for disposal or composting. But know that many regulatory jurisdictions frown upon direct combustion and prefer composting or AD.
There are many variables to consider with each organics management method, and there are no silver bullets as each has its pros and cons. It’s important to do a deep dive, site-specific analysis, carefully weighing each of your options. And of course, once the emission and energy impacts and benefits are determined, cost—both capital and operating—must be considered for a truly sustainable solution.
About the Author: Patrick Sullivan, BCES, CPP, REPA, is a Senior Vice President of SCS Engineers and the Business Unit Director of our Southwest Region, encompassing California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and New Mexico. He is also our National Expert on the Clean Air Act and the New Source Performance Standard (NSPS). He also serves as the Practice Leader for SCS’s Solid Waste Practice in the Southwest, and he oversees companywide GHG and Risk Assessment programs. Mr. Sullivan has over 30 years of environmental engineering experience, specializing in solid waste management and other environmental issues.
SCS Engineers seeks a Construction Superintendent who is responsible for the day-to-day activities on-site with regard to the project scope of scheduling, manpower, and budget. Your work helps reduce methane emissions at agricultural facilities and landfills, repurpose contaminated properties, and produce alternative energy. Join a national 100% employee-owned firm where your efforts make a difference.
Regulatory movement around PFAS is picking up; this year and next could be monumental around managing these toxic compounds in landfills and leachate. Operators should look out for proposed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules in 2022 and final rules in 2023. Most notably, two PFAS categories, PFOA and PFOS, could be classified as hazardous wastes under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), aka Superfund. Also, expect rules on monitoring and limiting PFAS in drinking water.
Amidst this regulatory activity, PFAS treatment research advances, which will be critical to landfill operators when they are charged with managing this very challenging stream. With existing options, it’s near impossible to destroy these “forever chemicals,” known for their carbon-fluorine bond, considered one of the strongest in nature.
SCS Engineers’ Gomathy Radhakrishna Iyer advises operators on what to look for to brace for regulatory change and advises them on their best defense—the treatment piece. She explains current options and potential technology breakthroughs on the horizon.
“On the legislative front, standardized guidance might not happen overnight. There’s much to learn, as leachate is not the same, including as it pertains to PFAS. Concentrations and compounds vary. So, EPA is gathering data and knowledge to inform policy and mitigation options moving forward,” Iyer says.
Today’s focus entails developing and validating methods to detect and measure PFAS in the environment. The EPA is evaluating technologies to reduce it and is trying to understand better the fate and transport of PFAS in landfills (including landfill gas, leachate, and waste).
While PFAS concentrations in leachate sent to publicly owned treatment plants (POTW) are unknown, the EPA 2023 rule aims to fill in the missing pieces. What is learned and subsequent decisions will be critical to landfill operators who depend on POTWs as a final destination for leachate and at a time when POTWs meet stringent guidelines on what they can accept. The EPA’s focus will begin with guidance on monitoring and reporting figures, including a list of PFAS to watch for in 2022.
In the meantime, the agency published interim guidance on destroying and disposing of PFAS, which it plans to update in fall 2023. The interim guidance identifies the information gap with regard to PFAS testing and monitoring, reiterating the need for further research to address the FY20 National Defense Authorization Act NDAA requirements. Operators can also look to SWANA treatment guidelines to help prepare for new rules.
Get ahead of the game by doing your homework on treatments, Iyer advises. POTWs have discharge limits, and once PFAS in leachate is weighed in with the existing constituent limits on permits, ensuring a disposal destination will call for proactive measures.
The discussion on treatments will be important. Iyer advises on staying up with expectations that may be in the pipeline, beginning by focusing on today’s commercially available options:
Comparing these methods, Iyer says, “Biological treatments work better simply as a pretreatment method, removing PFAS to some extent. Their performance may also only apply to non-biodegradable organic matter. Considering these limitations, the alternative of physical-chemical treatments is most often recommended by industry experts; they appear to be more effective as supported by data,” Iyer says.
Her preference is RO, the membrane-enabled separation process, which many treatment plants already use, or are considering, to remediate other constituents. “Because we know RO to be effective with other contaminants and PFAS, I think it’s a great gainer, especially if plants already use this method to treat leachate for other contaminants successfully,” she says.
RO requires relatively little operational expertise, while other physical-chemical methods, such as GAC and ion exchange, require some chemistry knowledge.
“With granular activated carbon and ion exchange, resins attach to contaminants in leachate. These approaches require pretreatment for organics removal, process understanding, and operator involvement. Conversely, with RO, you learn a fairly straightforward process and move through the steps,” she says.
But while physical-chemical treatments are the best readily available options today, each has limitations. RO leaves a residue requiring further treatment; then, the material is typically recirculated in landfills as a slurry or hauled to a POTW, meaning there is no guarantee they will not need to be addressed later. Other methods, such as GAC, are more energy-intensive and have limited sorbent capacity. Ion exchange, in particular, has difficulty removing short-chain PFAS, which persist in the environment.
When the time comes that PFAS have stringent discharge limit requirements, no one of these technologies may work as a standalone, so the search is on for more robust systems.
Several new treatments are under research; unlike their predecessors, they appear to break the chemical bond.
Iyer shares her take on each option:
“I’m especially interested in seeing how plasma treatment works in the real world versus the lab. The building costs can be higher, and leveraging electricity to break the bond is expensive. But the maintenance should be easy and relatively inexpensive compared to other technologies. It will be interesting to see how economical it would be for landfills over the long run.”
There is more to learn about each of these new technologies. Researchers are working to identify the adsorbents that best suit PFAS compound removal, whether short or long chains. With photocatalytic reaction, a research direction is exploring combining UV rays, a catalyst, and an oxidant to degrade PFAS.
“We know that the absorption options and photocatalytic concepts work well on strong contaminants,” Iyer says. She moves on to her thoughts on thermal treatment. She wants to know more about this particular option before weighing in. “I’m not sure how feasible this method will be for the operators. PFAS get destroyed at a temperature greater than 1,000 degrees Celsius. But for high quantities of leachate, this option could be expensive.”
Most EPA-funded research is based on these developing treatment processes. But there is plenty to evaluate to identify the best solutions in a given scenario. With that understanding, the agency is trying to understand the types and volumes of PFAS generated, how they change or degrade as they enter landfills, and where they originate. EPA is building a database to track this information to consider key characteristics of individual PFAS to help guide forthcoming guidance on treatments.
In the meantime, Iyer advises operators to pay close attention to evolving developments and communications from EPA.
We recently saw the memorandum from EPA on addressing PFAS discharges in EPA-issued NPDES permits. We will look for guidance to the state permitting authorities to address PFAS in NPDES permits soon and more information from the EPA’s roadmap.
At SCS, we use our time to learn about technologies, including what’s still under investigation and explore what seems to work. In addition, watch for guidance documents, not just from EPA but from research organizations such as EREF and universities. Do your due diligence and keep your eyes and ears open for EPA and your state regulatory authority announcements. Staying informed is the best strategy for landfill operators at this point.
Liquids and wastewater management resources.
When municipalities’ collection routes run like well-oiled machines, trucks make money for them, translating to lower rates for taxpayers and streamlined, effective curbside service. But waste haulers typically lack two potentially powerful tools to gauge efficiencies and inform cost-saving decisions for the most robust collection route optimization.
What’s missing are formal analyses and standardized key performance indicators (KPIs) tailored for this specialized, complex niche.
Some industry experts look to close the gap. They are developing and leveraging KPIs and analyses, aiming for more and better data to drive productivity. They find the two tools work well together: KPIs provide a baseline to inform the comprehensive analysis.
“What we are doing is standardizing the evaluation of collections to quantify performance and outcomes better using more detailed parameters than before,” says Kevin Callen of Route Optimization Consultants. He works with SCS Engineers to improve cities’ collection operations.
New performance parameters fill in where the number of stops, tons collected, and time on route leave off. These are the beginnings of KPIs, but to really tell the story of how well collection routes run, metrics must go deeper to assess near-countless variables potentially impacting outcomes. The human variable –actions of customers, drivers, and helpers – is part of that.
“You can have all the data in the world and have the route worked out to run like a Swiss watch. But the human factor is a wild card,” says Josh Krumski of SCS Engineers.
KPIs Can Peer Into Human Behaviors
Analyzing collection operations through a KPI lens sometimes enables municipalities to understand better the drivers’ judgment calls and how they play out. And it gives insight to help prepare for unpredictable circumstances in this fast-moving, changing industry.
“Ultimately, we are trying to set up methodology and identify best practices to improve route operations as they grow and change. It’s a systematic way to monitor operations closely. To determine if collections are as productive as possible and identify problems and underlying causes if they fall short,” Callen says.
Krumski leverages multiple KPIs to help with his toughest charge: balancing costs and service quality in an industry with a tight profit margin.
“When you see what towns bill to collect waste and recycling, then consider operational costs, it’s clear that if they run behind a few hours a day, it eats into their budgets. Time to get out of the truck, open the corral, service the container, put it back, and close the corral starts to add up,” he says.
SCS Engineers use KPIs to gauge more than what happens at curbside stops, leaning on them to provide objective, big-picture insight to municipalities too busy to vet as they run their daily operations. Below are KPIs that the team finds best to help inform their collection route optimization projects.
Maximum Dumps
At the top of the list is the maximation of dumps, which is about loading trucks to full capacity while minimizing commute time to and from disposal sites.
Crews should optimally do three dumps during a typical 10-hour route and two during an average eight-hour route. If they aren’t achieving this, the question is, how might they be able to?
Packout Ratio
Look for the answer in the packout ratio. This KPI defines the weight of waste in the truck versus the maximum weight it can hold. Using its full capacity more often is one way to work within a tight profit margin.
The key to getting ultimate packout ratios is distributing customers associated with long travel times across multiple routes. The distribution enables workers to fill trucks quickly, dump, and get back on their routes—not easy to do on a continuous long haul as there isn’t time to packout trucks. But with well-planned, evenly distributed courses, haulers achieve packout ratios of 85-90% to 100%. Callen says that the higher percentages translate to less trekking to and from the landfill and more time knocking off collections.
Workday Utilization
Workday utilization is the percent of the day spent completing a route, divided by scheduled hours in the day.
With seven hours typically dedicated to the job, there is little slack to tug on to expand routes. As you aim to increase productivity, be careful to avoid long days and overtime, Callen advises, especially considering you must factor in weather, truck issues, and fluctuations in set out weights, among other often unexpected circumstances that add time.
Further, Krumski cautions, “You can only be behind the wheel so many hours a day, or you fall into a Department of Transportation safety violation.”
Ensuring evenly balanced workloads helps. Krumski looks at performance data to identify drivers who may finish in eight hours and those spending 10 hours on the road.
“When I see this disparity, I ask, where and how can we change up routes for a better workday balance and get people in simultaneously? For instance, if someone broke down, another driver can pick up the load.” He looks at automation, asking if he can change any part of the route to automatic side loaders (ASL) to rely less on pickers.
Service Time
Service time is hours spent only driving the route and collecting. That’s the most obvious job, but only part of what workers do during a collection day.
Haulers do their best to maximize service time. But mitigating factors weigh in, Callen says. Workers have about four hours a day to focus solely on collecting, spending their remaining time traveling to and from disposal/recovery facilities, waiting in line there, servicing their vehicles, on required breaks, etc.
One best practice is to shoot for route times that are 30 minutes shorter than the planned workday. Here, automation may again come into play. Asking customers to schedule bulk pickups saves time too.
Route Balance
Design routes to maximize weight, fuel, miles, and time.
Krumski leverages this KPI to explore if and how he might redistribute stops on each route to be as uniform as possible while considering these four factors.
An example is having two trucks serving the same route. Due to their size, the trucks have limited maneuverability, sometimes only able to pick up on one side of a street. When two trucks serve the same route, they don’t need to double back or drive around several times.
A route balance entails diving into multiple metrics. Krumski exemplifies this with a client scenario: there are two routes; one with 1,000 stops; another with just over 500. But they are balanced because there is less distance between the 1,000 stops.
“The route with fewer stops drives several miles uninterrupted, so the picker can’t ride on the back, which takes time. If you have several hundred consecutive close stops where the picker can ride on the step and quickly get into and out of the truck, you’re fine,” Krumski says.
So besides stops, he looks at the distance between stops, time to complete a route minus downtime, and especially watches whole-route weights.
“If weights are wonky and routes with heavier loads are trailing, that’s when we focus more on weights to balance routes,” Krumski says.
“But while weight is a big factor, it’s not everything, as seen in comparing the two routes where the one with the lesser units stopped much more frequently. And sometimes, weather or different human elements throw a wrench in your plan. I saw a lot of that during COVID.”
Collection Day Balance
This KPI refers to the range of time between the minimum and maximum cumulative times spent servicing all routes on a collection day. Getting that range entails looking at the fastest and slowest routes for each day.
A major discrepancy between the fastest and slowest crews calls for evaluation. Is it a routing issue, a collection issue, or a human issue? And is an adjustment needed?
Collection days and routes should be adjusted when one day requires an additional truck.
“Let’s say you have a tri axle servicing a route in two dumps. It goes down, so you have to send in two smaller trucks. Or you need a smaller truck to navigate alleys or side streets due to detours or other circumstances requiring negotiating smaller spaces. You use a larger truck for main routes and a smaller truck for problem areas,” Krumski says.
Distance and cost to dump also commonly come into play. Sending multiple trucks to dump once may save money over having one larger truck dump multiple times.
Keeping up with Changes
While KPIs quantify performance and help inform best practices, achieving good outcomes requires keeping up with changes. Ongoing training is a must.
“When I ask drivers why they made a given decision, they routinely say it’s what they were taught. That instruction sometimes comes from someone who hasn’t been with the company in years. Best practices have to evolve to keep up with changes in community development and new technologies,” Krumski says.
The trash industry excels when it evolves as a whole. Using KPIs and existing technology has great potential to influence change and improve daily routes.
In a letter to Congress, SWANA and NWRA associations request that regulation under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) for addressing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) contamination assign environmental cleanup liability to the industries that created the pollution in the first place. Both associations note that MSW landfills and solid waste management, an essential public service do not manufacture nor use PFAS. The industry, and ultimately the general public should therefore not be burdened with CERCLA liability and costs associated with mitigating PFAS from water and wastewater.
May 10, 2022
Re: Relief for Municipal Solid Waste Landfills from CERCLA Liability for PFAS
Dear Chairman Carper, Ranking Member Capito, Chairman DeFazio, Ranking Member Graves, Chairman Pallone, and Ranking Member McMorris Rodgers:
The municipal solid waste (MSW) management sector strongly supports the goal of addressing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) contamination and holding accountable manufacturers and heavy users of these compounds. We are concerned, however, that regulation under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) instead would assign environmental cleanup liability to essential public services and their customers. We therefore request that Congress provide MSW landfills and other passive receivers with a narrow exemption from liability if certain PFAS are designated as hazardous substances under CERCLA. Doing so would keep CERCLA liability on the industries that created the pollution in the first place.
Context
• Landfills neither manufacture nor use PFAS; instead, they receive discarded materials containing PFAS that are ubiquitous in residential and commercial waste streams. MSW landfills and the communities they serve should not be held financially liable under CERCLA for PFAS contamination, as landfills are part of the long-term solution to managing these compounds.
• Landfills are essential public services that are subject to extensive federal, state, and local environmental, health, and safety requirements. Further, MSW landfills are important to managing and limiting PFAS in the environment, as recognized by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in its December 2020 draft Interim Guidance on the Destruction and Disposal of [PFAS] and Materials Containing [PFAS].
• Just as certain airports are required by law to use firefighting foam containing PFAS, permitting authorities often require landfills to accept waste streams containing PFAS.
• Most landfills rely on wastewater treatment facilities for leachate management. Wastewater and drinking water facilities increasingly rely on landfills for biosolids management and disposal of PFAS-laden filters. Efforts to address PFAS at MSW landfills and drinking water and wastewater facilities must avoid disrupting this interdependence among essential public services to communities.
• Landfill leachate typically represents a minor proportion of the total quantity of PFAS received at wastewater treatment facilities from all sources. PFAS manufacturers or users, by comparison, contribute PFAS at levels that can be orders of magnitude higher than landfills.
Significant Economic Impacts
• Removing PFAS from landfill leachate requires advanced treatment techniques which are prohibitively expensive. Estimated capital costs to implement leachate pretreatment at a moderate-sized landfill to the extent necessary to significantly reduce PFAS range from $2 million to $7 million, with nationwide costs totaling $966 million to $6.279 billion per year for the solid waste sector. Trace concentrations of PFAS nevertheless would remain in leachate following pretreatment, exposing landfills to CERCLA liability.
• Absent relief from CERCLA liability, manufacturers and heavy users of PFAS compounds will bring claims for contribution against landfills and other passive receivers, generating significant litigation costs. EPA’s exercise of enforcement discretion will not insulate landfills from this litigation.
• These costs will be passed along to communities, water and wastewater treatment facilities, and biosolids management, all of which rely on the services of MSW landfills.
Broad Unintended Consequences
• CERCLA regulation will impel landfills to restrict inbound wastes and/or increase disposal costs for media with elevated levels of PFAS, including filters, biosolids, and impacted soils at Department of Defense facilities. The mere prospect of regulation in this area is already disrupting the interdependence of the drinking water, wastewater, and solid waste sectors.
• Food waste compost may contain PFAS due to contact with PFAS-lined packaging materials. As a result, a CERCLA designation could result in communities diverting food waste from organics recycling programs, hindering federal, state, and local climate and waste reduction goals.
• Cost increases likely will have a significant disproportionate impact on low-income households that rely on the affordability of services that the solid waste sector provides.
Recommendation
Although our sector is simultaneously pursuing “no action assurance” from EPA, the agency historically has been very hesitant to provide this relief given its policy that assurances should be given only “in extremely unusual cases.” As such, and acknowledging that EPA may have limited authority to act on our request, we recommend providing the following narrow exemption from CERCLA liability that affords relief to landfills and other passive receivers of PFAS1:
(a) IN GENERAL.—No publicly owned or operated community water system (as defined at 42 U.S.C. 300f), publicly owned treatment works (as defined at 33 U.S.C. 1292), or municipal solid waste landfill (as defined at 40 C.F.R. 258.2) shall be liable under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (42 U.S.C. 9601 et seq.) for the costs of responding to, or damages resulting from, a release to the environment of a perfluoroalkyl or polyfluoroalkyl substance designated as a hazardous substance under section 102(a) of such Act that resulted from the discharge of effluent, the disposal or management of biosolids, the disposal of filtration media resin, or the discharge of leachate where such actions are in compliance with Federal or State law and all applicable permits.
(b) EXCEPTION.—Subsection (a) shall not apply with respect to any discharge described in such subsection that results from any gross negligence, willful misconduct, or noncompliance with any Federal or State law or permit governing the discharge of effluent, disposal or management of biosolids, disposal of filtration media resin, or waste disposal.
Thank you for your consideration of our request, and we look forward to continuing to partner with the federal government to ensure the safe and effective management of waste streams containing PFAS.
Sincerely,
National Waste & Recycling Association
Solid Waste Association of North America
cc: Senate EPW Committee Members
House T&I and E&C Committee Members
_______________________________________
1 The exemption would not extend to underlying soil and groundwater contamination from a MSW landfill or to facilities other than MSW landfills that accept waste streams with elevated concentrations of PFAS.
The Food DROP and RecycleSmart case studies in this EM article illustrate the successful collaboration between local governments and stakeholders in food recovery. In both cases, local government staff invested time to understand the barriers and benefits of different aspects of recovery. The resulting recovery programs provide local benefits by supporting the community and the collective benefit of reducing the amount of food waste sent to landfills in California.
As environmental professionals, we believe that positions us as key collaborators for these recovery programs across the country, whether helping businesses overcome the barriers and participate in food donation programs or to support the capacity expansion of recovery organizations and services. We encourage you to learn more about the food recovery organizations and services in your community and start a conversation about how to best support their work.
Start by reading the article, Collaboration Is the Key to Successful Edible Food Recovery, for advice from these SCS Engineers environmental professionals.
Landfills across the country are experiencing a trend ─ black goo, pluggage, and scaling in their leachate and gas collection systems. These organic and inorganic deposits are difficult to treat once they’ve seeped into liquid and GCCS systems, the pluggage slows equipment and pipes, impacting the extraction of liquids and landfill gas.
Our team of engineers, scientists, and landfill-landfill gas operations experts will provide a comprehensive discussion in May of what we are seeing and piloting in the field.
Live on Thursday, May 19, 2022
2:00 pm Eastern Time for 1 hour
Register to receive on-demand access following the live forum.
Prevent chemical deposits and pluggage before your pipes slow landfill gas and leachate collection.
This educational, non-commercial webinar with a Q&A forum throughout is free and open to all who want to learn more about landfill pluggage concerns and preventative treatments to consider. We recommend this month’s discussion for landfill owners/operators, landfill gas technicians, environmental engineers, and environmental agency staff. A Certificate of Attendance is available on request following the live session.
Landfill efficiency: every landfill owner or operator knows that landfills are distinctly unique. Consequently, landfill gas collection and control systems (GCCS) and leachate management systems with highly engineered components are configured precisely to tailor to each landfill’s needs. North American landfills have always tried to be good neighbors, but now are making greater strides toward reducing emissions and protecting groundwater with master planning and technology. These plans keep the effectiveness of these systems running as efficiently as possible and help prevent expensive and extensive repairs.
Today’s blog takes us out in the field examining how to plan for these flexible high-dollar infrastructure systems. These plans are taking landfill operations into the future and are adaptable to changing regulations around emissions and the evolving waste streams that affect gas production.
We’ll also provide resources to similar articles about leachate systems, remote monitoring systems, drones, and carbon sequestration that are helping to keep your carbon footprint even lower and support landfill efficiency.
In the April issue of WasteAdvantage Magazine, Professional Engineers Vidhya Viswanathan and Maura Dougherty discuss how operators with 5-year and master plans in place get a payoff with a system that serves them well and costs less. They can prepare early for capturing their gas, use the plan to install gas collection infrastructure on a timely basis, and help guide them through post-closure among the daily benefits. Read Master Plan to Lower Your Landfill GCCS Infrastructure Investments here.
Planning/Managing Leachate/PFAS
Remote Monitoring and Control and Drones
(l) Liquids addition. The owner or operator of a designated facility with a design capacity equal to or greater than 2.5 million megagrams and 2.5 million cubic meters that has employed leachate recirculation or added liquids based on a Research, Development, and Demonstration permit (issued through Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), subtitle D, part 258) within the last 10 years must submit to the Administrator, annually, following the procedure specified in paragraph (j)(2) of this section, the following information:
(1) Volume of leachate recirculated (gallons per year) and the reported basis of those estimates (records or engineering estimates).
(2) Total volume of all other liquids added (gallons per year) and the reported basis of those estimates (records or engineering estimates).
(3) Surface area (acres) over which the leachate is recirculated (or otherwise applied).
(4) Surface area (acres) over which any other liquids are applied.
(5) The total waste disposed (megagrams) in the areas with recirculated leachate and/or added liquids based on on-site records to the extent data are available, or engineering estimates and the reported basis of those estimates.
(6) The annual waste acceptance rates (megagrams per year) in the areas with recirculated leachate and/or added liquids, based on on-site records to the extent data are available, or engineering estimates.
(7) The initial report must contain items in paragraph (l)(1) through (6) of this section per year for the most recent 365 days as well as for each of the previous 10 years, to the extent historical data are available in on-site records, and the report must be submitted no later than June 21, 2022.
(8) Subsequent annual reports must contain items in paragraph (l)(1) through (6) of this section for the 365-day period following the 365-day period included in the previous annual report, and the report must be submitted no later than 365 days after the date the previous report was submitted.
(9) Landfills in the closed landfill subcategory are exempt from reporting requirements contained in paragraphs (l)(1) through (7) of this section.
(10) Landfills may cease annual reporting of items in paragraphs (l)(1) through (6) of this section once they have submitted the closure report in § 62.16724(f).
If you need assitance meeting the regulations, please contact your project manager or send a request to
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