91仓库

David Kempisty

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Each week, millions of Americans roll their bins to the curb and never think twice about what comes next. The trash may leave our driveways, but it does not leave the planet. While landfills are often seen as a distant environmental concern, they are increasingly driving a hidden, immediate safety and environmental crisis. Leaking landfills release , along with other harmful contaminants, into soil, water, and air.

Everyone plays a role in this challenge, from households setting out weekly trash, to the industries and municipalities that manage it, to the land itself, which serves as the final receptor of contaminants. Only by acknowledging the severity of the situation can we begin steering the conversation toward a future where sustainable, science-backed solutions protect both public safety and the planet.

When Trash Becomes a Community Crisis

Beneath our landfills lies a complex mix of chemicals and waste that is breaking down at uneven rates, generating leachate that often includes PFAS, ammonia, heavy metals, and volatile organic compounds. The EPA reports that the U.S. has active municipal solid waste landfills, not to mention the thousands of closed or abandoned sites that can continue leaching contaminants for decades.

Among the most urgent of these contaminants are PFAS 鈥� known as 鈥渇orever chemicals鈥� because they do not readily break down in the environment鈥攚hich are toxic even at low concentrations and linked to numerous health issues. Many wastewater plants and landfill systems were never designed to handle, let alone remove, these contaminants.

These chemicals do not respect boundaries. They can move with groundwater, spread with biosolids, and can even find environmental pathways via the air. They can travel beyond the landfill itself, impacting communities that may have no idea they鈥檙e living downstream of contamination. Adding complexity to the issue, treatment plants and operators are often passive receivers in this cycle. 91仓库water facilities, in particular, may unwittingly spread PFAS further when biosolids produced from treated waste are applied to farmland, a practice entirely due to contamination risks.

The result is a cascade effect, with contaminants moving from trash to water to soil to food systems. With each step, contaminants travel farther from the original point source, distributing risks to more communities and ecosystems along the way. Put simply: What we bury does not go away. Contaminants can escape, circulate, and return to us.

The good news is that solutions exist. Rapid remediation strategies and advanced technologies are helping landfill operators contain contaminants before they spread, but greater education and awareness are needed to solve these problems at scale.

How Can We Better Scale Rapid Remediation?

Rapid remediation involves deploying proven technologies before contaminants spread further into our soil, water, and air.听 However, we have yet to see widespread adoption of these technologies. The following steps are crucial for us to expand rapid remediation and turn promising technologies into solutions that protect communities nationwide.

#1: Pilot Testing Pretreatment Solutions

Every landfill is unique. Technologies that work well at one site will need some form of optimization to be adapted at another, making it harder to replicate solutions quickly or uniformly. That is why treatability studies are crucial. They let operators begin small at the bench scale, then progress to pilot and, eventually, full-scale systems. It鈥檚 a 鈥渃rawl, walk, run鈥� approach to identify what actually works best before investing millions in infrastructure.

At each stage, operators can test pretreatment, primary treatment, and polishing steps with real leachate. This ensures solutions are tailored to the specific mix of contaminants coming out of a given site and the particular treatment objectives for that site. In practice, this might mean shipping a thousand liters of landfill leachate to a lab, running multiple treatment methods side by side, and comparing outcomes. The weakest options are quickly discarded, while the most promising are optimized and scaled up.

#2: Expand Access for Smaller Communities

Large waste operators have resources to experiment with new solutions, but small towns are often left behind. Many rural facilities rely on one or two operators juggling multiple responsibilities, without access to consultants, regulatory expertise, or advanced equipment.

Grant programs can help, such as:

Federal and state funding mechanisms help quantify the scope of the problem and training, certifications, and technical awareness. This ensures remediation is accessible to communities everywhere.

#3: Deploy Advanced Treatment Technologies

Treatment technologies to address landfill contaminants are real, effective, and already in use.

• Foam fractionation, designed specifically for landfill challenges, reduces much of the pre-treatment required by other solutions and offers a robust path to bring levels down to discharge standards. Full-scale treatment systems have been designed, built, and are in continuous service today.
• Ion exchange resins, including regenerable versions, can be coupled with foam fractionation to reduce contaminant loads to near zero. This technology is currently in use today for these types of applications.
• Other innovations, such as NanoSORB and enhanced physical-chemical processes, expand the toolkit further, ensuring there are multiple ways to tackle the problem.

We need to move beyond isolated projects by building stronger public鈥損rivate partnerships, incentivizing early adoption, and treating landfill remediation as a shared responsibility across industries and communities.

Science Has the Solutions, if We Choose to Act

The scale of the landfill problem may feel overwhelming, but proven solutions already exist. The real challenge lies in scaling these technologies and committing to act before the crisis worsens. And this is where all of us鈥攍andfill operators, policymakers, and community members鈥攃an play a role. By advocating for the right combination of science, innovation, and shared responsibility, we can create waste systems that protect water, soil, and air for generations to come.

David Kempisty is VP of Technology for Montrose Environmental Group. He is a licensed engineer with over 20 years experience in the water treatment and environmental remediation space. His current role at Montrose Environmental Group focuses on the use of novel technologies for the removal of emerging contaminants such as PFAS, 1,4 dioxane and carcinogenic volatile organics from the environment. Before this, he spent 22 years in the United States Air Force as an environmental engineer, occupational health consultant and assistant professor. He can be reached at [email protected].