Operators who assess their current leachate treatment, understand the landscape, consider the cost implications of inaction, and plan ahead can regain autonomy by adopting a solution that allows them to adapt to changing regulations long term.
By Greg Ackerson
Picture this: your landfill is operating as usual鈥攃ollecting leachate, pumping it into a truck, and hauling it to the nearest wastewater treatment plant, where it is diluted and discharged into the environment. The process may be a bit labor-intensive and takes a lot of your budget, but, as the adage says, 鈥淚f it ain鈥檛 broke, don鈥檛 fix it.鈥�
Then, suddenly, your wastewater treatment plant doubles or triples your fees to bring leachate there, which extends beyond your budget. Or worse, the wastewater treatment plant notifies you that it will no longer accept leachate starting next month. Now, what?
This is happening to landfills across the country. With PFAS and other toxins contaminating landfill leachate, cities, counties, and states are imposing stricter regulations. More often, county administrators, city public works managers, and landfill supervisors share that they need to be prepared to do something different with leachate. But they are not sure what to do next.
Here are some recommendations to work on to identify and fix gaps before regulations change and disrupt your operations. This readiness checklist will help you scale with the changes, because it is not a matter of if, but when, they will occur.
#1: Understand the Landscape
Understanding the levels of PFAS and other toxins in your landfill leachate is an important first step in evaluating the landfill鈥檚 current state. It might be a scary question to ask鈥攁nd even scarier to get the answer鈥攂ut it is necessary to understand what you are dealing with at your landfill. It puts you a step ahead of the other landfills that are not being proactive.
Another part of understanding the landscape is to start conversations with key people on the front lines. For example, some of the most important relationships start with companies and drivers who transport leachate and wastewater treatment plant managers. Whether you oversee a landfill from the municipal side or manage a landfill directly, it is best for you to understand the pressures they are under or the chatter they are hearing, so you can plan for what is next. Could they soon make changes that result in turning away your landfill鈥檚 leachate?
Another great resource is someone at your state鈥檚 regulatory agency. They may be able to validate what you are hearing from the front lines or provide insight on impending changes to regulatory limits for PFAS and other contaminants of concern. Gathering that information allows you to make plans that incorporate discharge limits.
Having any of these conversations may also help you understand possible timelines for change. And one quick tip: if everyone is being tight-lipped, you should take this as a sign and get busy with the rest of this checklist.
Image courtesy of Apex Water Solutions.
#2: Develop Back-Up Plans for Managing Leachate
Consider what it would look like for your landfill to suddenly be forced to find another solution for leachate management. This is a very real scenario that could upend your operations. For as long as we have had (and will have) landfills, leachate will be a factor. Rain and snowmelt will always seep through waste and leave toxic sludge for us to deal with.
The vulnerability lies in relying on a third-party vendor for critical leachate management when that vendor鈥檚 long-term availability is uncertain. Landfills cannot prevent leachate generation, nor do they have the capacity to store leachate indefinitely. Depending on the season, larger landfills can find themselves hauling leachate to wastewater treatment plants multiple times a day.
Many landfills operate with limited flexibility in leachate management. If your wastewater treatment plant stopped accepting leachate tomorrow, what would your backup plan be? Maybe it is to go to the next closest wastewater treatment plant, which comes with higher costs. And when that plant begins denying leachate, what then? Do you keep traveling further to other plants?
When leachate management depends entirely on third parties, operational flexibility becomes increasingly limited. Being autonomous is one of the best ways to mitigate future leachate challenges. Investigate how onsite treatment systems remove leachate transport and wastewater treatment plants from the equation and put landfills back in control.
#3: Consider the Financial Impact of Inaction
For years, when it comes to managing leachate, landfills have operated on fairly predictable budgets, barring standard annual fee increases. However, transportation and fuel costs have gone up significantly, and with changing regulations, wastewater treatment plant disposal fees are also increasing.
While the cost of doing nothing is hard to calculate, it could be significant. If your wastewater treatment plant stops accepting leachate and you travel to the next-closest wastewater treatment plant as a backup, inflated transportation and disposal costs could make decision-makers say, 鈥淓nough鈥檚 enough.鈥� The breaking point is not the same for every landfill; it could be five or even 10 years. By that point, however, it is possible that most, if not all, wastewater treatment plants may have closed their doors to leachate.
Maintaining the status quo carries real financial exposure that compounds over time. It does not position your landfill for the future, even if that future means closure. Closed landfills still create leachate, but now your landfill is not collecting any fees to manage it, which means paying for treatment will be a challenge. As costs rise and options narrow, the financial margin for maintaining current practices will continue to shrink.
#4: Understand if Your Current Solution is Scalable
Right now, PFAS is top of mind as a significant contaminant of concern in leachate. It should be. It is linked to cancers, liver damage, infertility, thyroid disease, and more鈥攂ut it was not even on the radar 10 years ago. Landfill supervisors always knew that leachate was nasty, but the visibility of just how nasty has grown significantly and very publicly.
Maintaining open lines of communication with regulatory officials and paying attention to public opinion is critical during these changing times. This will help you see what is coming and plan for it.
New PFAS limits continue to be imposed, and landfills need to be cognizant of and manage to these limits. If your current solution grows with you and meets new regulations without disruption or extra costs, then you are on the right track. However, patchwork solutions to meet regulations may work in the moment, but they are not a long-term solution.
What will the 鈥渘ext鈥� PFAS be? Future contaminants of concern are difficult to predict, which makes flexibility and scalability critical considerations. Without a proactive approach toward treating new contaminants of concern, you risk delayed response times, rushed decisions, and possibly expensive solutions that still do not quite cut it, which can feed into public outcries that you are not doing enough to protect the community.
#5: Planning for Long-term Autonomy
Just like your city or county develops an annual plan to prepare for the future, the landfill should develop its own roadmap to adjust systems that no longer meet the needs of a changing industry and replace them with options that have longevity and spark confidence that community leaders are putting both fiscal and public health first. During planning, pilot-testing a few solutions could be very helpful.
Onsite contaminant-specific solutions reduce toxicity levels to meet new wastewater treatment limits. However, the leachate is still transported to the wastewater treatment plant as usual. This option just adds to the cost and does not solve for the time when wastewater treatment plants stop accepting leachate altogether.
The most scalable option uses onsite technology that removes contaminants of concern, creating clean water that is released into the environment鈥攊t is flexible with new regulations and contaminants, allowing landfill operators to respond immediately. Look for technologies that are comparable to the current costs for hauling and disposing at wastewater treatment plants. Just because it is onsite technology does not mean it cannot meet your budget.
Ensure that you find a system that removes toxins to 鈥渘on-detect鈥� levels鈥攔ather than the minimum required to get by鈥攁nd handles the concentrate onsite, keeping the system scalable. Understand how the provider will design the system for staff adoption, because unused or underused technology is never cost-effective.
Planning Ahead
Landfill leachate will always contain PFAS and other contaminants of concern. Without treatment that removes them, those contaminants are simply redistributed back into the environment. As public awareness grows, regulatory pressure will follow鈥攁nd access to wastewater treatment plants will become increasingly limited.
Restrictions on hauling leachate are going to affect you, if they have not already. Operators who assess their current leachate treatment, understand the landscape, consider the cost implications of inaction, and plan ahead can phase out tired systems and regain autonomy by adopting a solution that allows them to adapt to changing regulations long term. | WA
Greg Ackerson is the CEO of Apex Water Solutions, an industry leader in landfill leachate and PFAS management. Apex Water Solutions鈥� WARP (91仓库water Advanced Remediation Process) System is the first onsite U.S. landfill leachate treatment that produces clean water that meets national drinking water standards鈥攔emoving PFAS and other contaminants of concern that would otherwise be transported, diluted, and discharged into the environment, threatening public health and groundwater. Greg can be reached at [email protected]. For more information, visit .