=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #232
—May 8, 1991—
News and resources for environmental justice.
——
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org
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PUBLIC OWNERSHIP OF DUMPS IS THE KEY.
What does it take–really–to make a good landfill?
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed new
regulations for municipal solid waste landfills back in August,
1988 (see RHWN #231). Soon the Agency will publish final
regulations, which are likely to draw heavily on the earlier
proposals. Many generations of Americans will be affected by
these regulations because we presently bury about 134 million
tons of municipal solid waste (MSW) in the ground each year.
Although these wastes are legally “non-hazardous,” the estimated
90 billion gallons of leachate that drip into the ground (and the
groundwater) beneath MSW landfills each year are definitely
carcinogenic and toxic (see RHWN #90).
The new regulations will not make MSW landfills any safer. They
may, however, delay the release of toxic leachate into the
groundwater below landfills. In proposing new MSW landfill
regulations, EPA says right up front that all landfills will
eventually leak, and then proceeds to describe the real meat of
the proposed regulations, which is a “corrective action” program
to clean up each leaking mess after it has begun leaking.[1]
Obviously, this is an exceedingly costly approach to the problem
of managing MSW–intentionally creating problems you know you’ll
later pay to try to solve. In truth, it is a consultants’ dream
because it will require many billions of dollars for “remediation
specialists” to try to clean up today’s messes tomorrow. (A
question occurs: Are the people writing these regulations hoping
to create jobs for themselves as cleanup consultants?)
As we saw last week, the EPA readily admits that all landfills
leak and that all landfills will, therefore, sooner or later,
require a “corrective action” program to clean them up. The
Agency knows it will happen because it has happened before and
often. EPA says, “EPA has evidence that ground water has been
contaminated by MSWLFs [municipal solid waste landfills] on a
local basis in many parts of the nation and on a regional basis
in some heavily populated and industrialized areas. Evaluation of
163 MSWLF case studies has indicated ground-water contamination
or adverse trends in ground-water quality at 146 of them.” (pg.
33366) That’s a 90% contamination rate for groundwater beneath
municipal solid waste land fills.
EPA also knows, from theoretical considerations, that all
landfills will one day require “corrective action:” “First, even
the best liner and leachate collection systems will ultimately
fail due to natural deterioration, and recent improvements in
[MSW] containment technologies suggest that releases may be
delayed by many decades at some landfills. For this reason the
Agency is concerned that while corrective action may have already
been triggered at many facilities, 30 years may be insufficient
to detect releases at other landfills. The Agency, therefore,
wants to ensure that any potential release will be detected
regardless of when it occurs.” (pg. 33345) To this end, as we saw
last week, the agency expects the landfill cover (its “cap”) to
be replaced periodically and the monitoring wells to be replaced
periodically. The monitoring wells are really critical: “Even the
best designs, operating practices, and quality control procedures
cannot always prevent unexpected failure of a landfill.
Therefore, ground-water monitoring at all facilities, including
those that are properly designed and operated, is viewed by the
Agency as an essential measure to insure protection of human
health and the environment,” EPA says. (pg. 33366)
The strategy of the new regulations is to ensure that when the
inevitable leakage begins, regulatory officials will be alerted
so they can ask the owner/operator to begin “corrective action”
which usually means pumping groundwater to the surface, treating
it to remove contaminants (which will then be buried in another
landfill somewhere), returning the cleaned water to the
subsurface. The regulations never address the fundamental
problem, now widely acknowledged among the world’s community of
geologists and hydrologists, which is that contaminated
groundwater is exceedingly difficult–often impossible–to clean
up, once it is contaminated. (See RHWN #163.) Really, the only
way to guarantee clean groundwater is to never contaminate it in
the first place.
What makes this EPA shell game so tawdry and pathetic is that
real solutions are readily available, solutions that do not ask
us to make the preposterous assumption that a dedicated
priesthood of garbage persons will, in perpetuity, be replacing
the plastic caps and the monitoring wells at today’s landfills.
We could prevent landfills from contaminating groundwater by
simply changing the rules about ownership of landfills. We should
prohibit the private ownership of dumps.
The issue of private vs. public ownership of dumps is key. If a
dump is privately owned, the owner has a strong incentive (money)
to take as much garbage as possible through the front gate
because every ton earns a “tipping fee” which is the landfill
owner’s bread and butter. Private owners want to fill the dump as
fast as possible (get the most money into the bank as quickly as
possible) and they have little or no interest in monitoring what
comes through the front gate. Very likely, they will go bankrupt,
or will skip town, before any serious pollution occurs, so they
don’t care if the garbage is filled with toxics or is clean as a
whistle. It’s literally not their problem. They have no real
incentive to care. Landfill owners typically live somewhere
else–and as more big companies take over dumps, it becomes ever
more true that dump owners live far from the dumps they own.
It is private owners of dumps who sue in court to prevent states
from closing their borders to out-of-state garbage. They sue
under the interstate commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution,
and often they win the right to force a locality to take garbage
from far away. This is another serious problem of private
ownership.
On the other hand, when a dump is owned by a public agency (a
county, or town, government, for example), the incentives are
entirely different. The empty dump is a local asset. The
government wants to make it last as long as possible, so there is
an incentive to restrict what can come in the gate. The
interstate commerce clause is not an issue because local
governments have the right to restrict who can dump what at the
local landfill. No local government in its right mind would want
to take garbage from another state or county. (There are a few
towns on record favoring huge imports of trash into their
community, but these are places where local officials have been
seduced by a garbage company and are now eager to turn garbage
tricks for their entire region. Such instances of municipal
prostitution are rare.)
To minimize dangers from dumping, local governments can restrict
what comes in the gate. They can, for example, refuse to take
mixed wastes–only separated wastes can come in. Further, they
can order that nothing recyclable can be buried in the ground,
and nothing compostable. Naturally, they could refuse to take
anything remotely toxic or dangerous. They could even refuse to
take reusable items, like old stoves, directing them instead to
Goodwill, or to some other fix-it organization.
Because the leachate from dumps is a demonstrable hazard to local
water supplies, local governments can control what goes into
their landfill in the name of public health and safety–and these
are powers of government derived directly from the Constitution.
It would therefore seem to be a valid exercise of a local
government’s police power if the local government were to pass an
ordinance outlawing private ownership of landfills. Outlawing
privately-owned new landfills will be much easier than outlawing
private ownership of existing landfills because the present
owners would fight in court for their God-given right to poison
the environment for profit.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
===============
[1] U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Solid Waste Disposal
Facility Criteria,” FEDERAL REGISTER, Vol. 53, No. 166 (aug. 30,
1988), pgs. 33314-33422.”
For ideas on landfill controls, I am indebted to Paul Connett of
Work on Waste USA [82 Judson St., Canton, NY 13617; (315)
379-9200–if you’re not reading their weekly news bulletin, WASTE
NOT, you should be, and to attorney Mark Lohbauer of the
Philadelphia firm, Leather & Lohbauer [(215) 423-5000].
Descriptor terms: landfilling; public participation; msw;
regulations; epa; leachate; groundwater contamination; remedial
action; accidents; monitoring; compliance; private ownership;
policies;