Landfill acceptance criteria: justification and background

1. Landfill acceptance criteria:justification and background Heijo Scharff FEAD Workshop Implementation of the Landfill Directive Budapest, Hungary, 11 May 2007

2. Contents • Requirements of the Landfill Directive • Development of acceptance criteria • Regulations do not (yet) fulfil their own ambitions • What does society need? www.sustainablelandfillfoundation.eu

3. Landfill Directive • Considerations (6): ‘landfill should be adequately … managed to prevent or reduce potential adverse effects to the environment and risks to human health’ • Considerations (7): ‘.. it must be possible to monitor landfill sites with respect to the substances contained in the waste deposited there, whereas such substances should .. react only in foreseeable ways’ • Considerations (20): ‘.. in order to prevent threats to the environment, it is necessary to introduce a uniform waste acceptance procedure..’

4. Landfill Directive • Annex II describes general principles and guidelines outlining preliminary waste procedures • ‘The composition, leachability, long-term behaviour and general properties of a waste must be known as precisely as possible...’ • ‘Criteria for acceptance … must be derived from considerations pertaining to … protection of the environment … of environmental protection systems … of waste stabilisation processes … against human health hazards’

5. Acceptance criteria • Council Decision of 19 December 2002 established criteria and procedures for the acceptance of waste at landfills • Leaching limit values were introduced with regard to groundwater protection • Source – path – threatened object approach was used • It is essentially a risk assessment method • Backward modelling from a point of compliance

6. Drinking water well Landfill Acceptance criteria

7. Road base Drinking water well Mining Industrially contaminated soil Landfill Coastal protection Plant Roof runoff Construction Agriculture sewer Drinking water pipes Different scenarios, same problem

8. Fulfilling ambitions? • Acceptance criteria relate to individual wastes • No reference to how wastes interact: no guarantee that wastes only react in foreseeable ways • The long-term behaviour of waste strongly depends on other wastes: no guidance to determine behaviour • In other words: the Landfill Directive and Council Decision on acceptance criteria do not (yet) fulfil the ambitions set out in the regulations • This is a problem both for operators and authorities

9. Landfill Directive • Art.13(d): ‘..for as long as the competent authority considers that a landfill is likely to cause a hazard to the environment .., the operator of the site shall be responsible..’ • Aftercare can only be ended when the competent authority can be convinced the landfill is no longer causing a hazard • That implies an assessment of long-term emissions and future risks should be provided • But there is no guidance, so how do we do that?

10. What does society need? • Both authorities and operators need a robust risk assessment method • It can be based on the approach developed for the establishment of the acceptance criteria • Prediction of long-term emissions of mixtures of waste based on individual waste characteristics is possible • It should take the entire landfill into account instead of just individual waste batches • It should account for different soil conditions and groundwater standards as the site selection of landfills is an important aspect in long-term emissions and risks

11. Thank you very muchfor your attention