Early Landfills

Environmental Science

Describe an open dump. Explain the environmental problems?
I think the problems caused by an open dump is common sense to explain because the pollutes that are found in solid waste can sink into our ground water or get carried by rainwater straight into our lakes and river, which affects our drinking water and the wildlife habitats. An open dump is uncontrolled piles of household garbage, bags of waste, appliances, old barrels, used tires, and more that can be threaten the health of humans, wild life, and the environment. An open dump is an illegal waste disposal site and should not be confused with a permitted municipal solid waste landfill of recycling facility. Open dumps position the threat of fire and explosion,
inhalation of toxic gases, and cause injury to children playing on or around the drop site.
Describe an early landfill. What are the problems associated with early landfills? Include a discussion of leachate, methane, incomplete decomposition and settling.
The landfills in the early 1960’s were an reflect a unmaintainable way to dispose waste because half of the waste would not be decomposed and the landfill frequently were congested which often impurities were leaked into our air and local ground water. Leachate organization was unhindered contaminant release, and there was no methane organization and incomplete decomposition and the settle was high because only 8% of the waste was secondhand.
Describe a modern landfill. What are the differences as compared to early landfills? What improvements have been made?
To ensure that our garbage does not harm the public health or the environment, today’s modern; state-of-the-art landfills are technically sophisticated and highly regulated. These landfills are usually mentioned to as municipal solid waste landfills to decide them from the open dumps of the past. Modern landfills include engineered protective liners, leachate group systems, groundwater nursing, gas group equipment, and environmental reportage requirements. Waste disposal was not a problem when we had a traveling existence, we simply moved away and left
our waste behind. Somewhere Around 10,000 BC, individuals started to abandon their traveling existence and live in societies. In 500 BC, Athens, Greece, recognized the first municipal waste dump in the western world by demanding foragers to dispose of waste at least one mile from the city’s walls so attackers could not easily scale the walls using the waste located there. However, dumping waste within cities remained the main disposal option in Europe and the United States until the late 1800s when a joining was made between disease and filthy environmental conditions. Toward the end of the 19th Century, many cities realized that throwing waste into the streets was causing health and radical problems. In reply, cities created garbage collection and discarding systems to collect garbage and dispose of it in open dumps, furnaces, or at sea. In the past, little respect was given to where landfills were situated and how they were operated. Today’s modern landfills are constructed in locations that protect human health and the environment as well as the organizational honesty of the landfill. For example, modern landfills are limited from being built in Floodplains unless engineering measures are in place to prevent a flood from washing MSW out of the landfill into local streams or rivers, swamplands unless the landfill will not cause important poverty of the wetland and the loss of swamplands is dodged. There are also fault areas, seismic bearing zones, and unstable areas unless the landfill is intended to maintain organizational honesty during a geologic occasion.
Modern landfills have introduced a number of protective working procedures. Landfills now have plans that ensure dangerous waste is not accepted and disposed of at the facility, wastes are not openly burned, unauthorized access is controlled, and bulk and non-containerized liquids are not believed. Finally, owners of modern landfills keep records and regularly report to state supervisory actions on groundwater, surface water, and air nursing activities.
Choose one of these landfills and explain the innovations being implemented to make the landfill more productive and to reduce its environmental impact:
Tessman Road Landfill, TX

The landfills are intended to protect the air, land and water.
It generates energy with gas improved at landfills. The Tessman Road Landfill in San Antonio is home to the world’s first landfill cap that gathers solar energy. With the land’s fifth largest occupational fleet, we are constantly working to decrease greenhouse gases and our dependence on distant oil by operating our trucks and other equipment more professionally. U can do this, in part, by using substitute fuels, hybrid-powered trucks and slothful regulators, and by extending oil drain intermissions. Today a key concern is sustainability. For the Republic, sustainability means defensive and improving our environment for upcoming generations and making decisions touching the business that consider the environmental impact of what we do and how we do it. The entire business is constructed upon providing amenities that meet our customers’ needs, but doing so in a way that reduces effects to the environment. During 2009, they brought eleven landfill gas-to-energy projects on line, bringing their total number of such projects to 74 or over one third of their active landfills. They own and 78 materials recovery facilities and other recycling processes. These facilities sort recyclable paper, aluminum, glass and other materials. A lot of the recyclable materials are internally collected by the residential collection
operations.

References http://www.epa.state.il.us/land/illegal-dumping/open-dumps.html Copyright © 1996-2011 Illinois EPA http://www.kankakeehealth.org/environmental-health/nuisance-solid-waste/open-dumps.html Copyright © 2003-2013 Kankakee County Health Department. All rights reserved.
Municipal Solid Waste. Anti Essays. Retrieved August 22, 2013, from the World Wide Web: http://www.antiessays.com/free-essays/295132.html http://www.environmentalistseveryday.org/docs/research-bulletin/Research-Bulletin-Modern-Landfill.pdf National Solid Wastes Management Association (NSWMA) staff (revised
August 2008).