Critics Urge Stricter California Landfill Rules

Saying current landfill financial assurance rules and current landfill regulations are a “ticking time bomb” and that the current situation stifles recycling, the GrassRoots Recycling Network, Madison, Wis., and the Sierra Club, San Francisco, have started pressuring the California Integrated Waste Management Board (CIWMB) to rethink the state’s landfill regulations.

The pressure is coming in the form of a petition the two groups are promoting. It says that the 1991 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) federal minimum standards for landfilling based on the principle of isolating waste in engineered sites containing liners and collection systems for leachate have not lived up to their promise. The rules were expected to increase landfill fees, according to the coalition, but instead the industry was able to dramatically reduce its unit costs by developing “megafills.”

In addition, the EPA itself has admitted that the liners will “eventually fail,” the groups say, but the financial assurance for the landfill owners is only 30 years, leaving the responsibility for the eventual clean-up responsible to governmental agencies and taxpayers.

The petition recommends that some materials be prohibited from being “disposed in the ground where it keeps the waste load potentially biologically active—and capable of generating a whole second wave of dangerous leachate and landfill gases when site engineering systems fail—effectively forever,” according to the coalition. The group says this is why Europe ordered the phase-out of the landfilling of organic materials in 1999.

Second, financial assurance bonds must be increased to reflect the true cost of long-term landfill maintenance. The coalition says that some provisions are as low as $5 million, which they say is barely enough to mow the lawn for the first 30 years of mandated post-closure care.