The companies who operate the landfills in our country would like us to believe one thing: landfills are safe. That statement could not be further from the truth. Almost undeniably, landfills are definitely not safe, and there are issues all of them share. Whether we are looking at the integrity of the landfill itself, the operation of the landfill, or the trucks and trash, the problems are not pretty.
If we were to pick the most dangerous problem common to all landfills, it would be that all landfills eventually leak, some sooner than others, but all landfills leak. The EPA confirmed this fact years ago. When they do start to leak, it is a collection of liquids called leachate. Leachate is made up of all the liquids accumulating inside the landfill from rotting trash and food mixed with any industrial waste thrown in the landfill. Leachate can even include prescription medications, old pesticides. and paint–anything that was thrown away can be part of leachate. Frequently containing chemicals like PCBs and acids, leachate is considered toxic and, in the past, has contaminated thousands of wells and water supplies across the country near these leaking landfills.
The landfill industry has produced studies that claim not all landfills leak, but according to the EPA, at some point, the liner, if the landfill even has one, will allow leachate from the landfill to leak into the soil underneath. This applies to single liner landfills, double liner landfills, all landfills.
The majority of people simply see our trash as something we put out for the garbage truck to pick up once or twice a week. Later that day, the garbage is magically gone. It just disappears, so we don’t think about it any longer. Just like flushing our toilet–we know it goes someplace, but we really don’t care because we no longer see it or smell it. However, those who live near one of the thousands of garbage dumps where trash is disposed of think about it a bit differently.
Landfills have existed throughout all of human history. People historically disposed of their waste items and no longer needed possessions in a pile out back away from where they lived. Archeologists have dug up piles of cast away items dating back thousands of years. For the longest time there was never a negative impact because the items disposed of were made of natural materials. In time, much of the waste biodegraded on its own, and the remnants left were non-hazardous.
When the world started to industrialize, the types of waste in a landfill rapidly changed, and so did the impact on people. The waste stream quickly went from broken pottery shards and animal bones to petroleum products, industrial chemicals, and plastics. Health issues by trash not properly disposed of became the norm. Up until the 1970s, landfills were simply created. Old landfills from the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s were usually no more than a big hole in the ground, a canyon, or an abandoned quarry. The operator just started a dump on a piece of property. Then, they began to fill it up with garbage and kept filling in the hole or piling the garbage higher and higher.
For many of these old landfills, it mattered not what was dumped in them, and they accepted everything. This included regular household trash, construction debris, asbestos, old industrial chemicals, toxic waste from factories, medical waste from hospitals, and dead animals. There was no liner underneath to prevent leaks or any system to prevent runoff from flowing away. Back then, landfills accepted anything and everything with almost zero restrictions. Industries were pleased as they had a very inexpensive way to dispose of highly toxic and hazardous waste.
There were many problems with this, however. As moisture in the form of rain and snow fell on the landfill, it mixed with all the rotting garbage and liquids inside to form a toxic leachate. The leachate and sludge would then soak into the ground underneath and around the landfill and run off into local streams and creeks, poisoning the areas. On the sides of large piles of garbage, the rain eroded away at the soils and trash, carrying it away to nearby properties and streams. Eventually, in many areas, this highly toxic liquid did wind up polluting the groundwater, local aquifers, and many wells supplying water to people nearby.
While Tony and I concede technology has made some improvements possible in landfill containment and leakage monitoring, these only exist in newer landfills constructed after stricter regulations went into effect. And, in our experience, even these new improvements are woefully inadequate protections. The liners are still known to leak, and even landfills using double liner systems have experienced the same issues. Also, this still did not address the basic fact that all landfills eventually will leak (and all the other, still unmentioned issues landfills have besides that). Furthermore, these safeguards only apply if the operators strictly adhere to them. So, not only will all landfills eventually leak, but in the meantime, people living nearby have to deal with many hazards that affect their health.
Up until the disposal of hazardous wastes started to become more regulated in the late 1970s and early 1980s, millions of gallons had already been disposed of in landfills across the country. Most, if not all, landfills were simple pits with absolutely no liners or protections from leakage of the contents dumped into it. At best, a layer of compacted clay was placed to slow down the inevitable leakage that would occur.The landfills still contained hazardous wastes and created hazards through its leachate, and emissions remained. Landfills that either reached their capacity or were ordered to close due to not meeting new environmental regulations were covered up with dirt and left to weather away, if they were covered up at all. Many were not even fenced off from the public and became fun areas for children nearby to play on.
These landfills are not tiny places. Many landfills were meant to operate for 20 or more years and be able to receive the trash generated from hundreds of thousands of people everyday. The quantity of rotting trash in some of the larger landfills is measured in the billions of pounds dumped into them each year.
Places like Orchard Hills, 50 miles west of Chicago, had two million tons, that is four billion pounds, of trash dumped there in 2008. For years neighbors would complain about the sulfuric rotten egg odor coming from the landfill. Puentes Hill in Los Angeles County took in about three million tons of trash, about six billion pounds of rotting, stinking garbage. Some areas of this landfill are over 500 feet deep of decomposing trash.
There are a host of environmental issues associated with a landfill, and studies that have monitored landfills and their effects on people living near them show negative health issues directly related to the landfills.
Based on the fact that all landfills eventually leak, both groundwater and surface water are potentially affected. Residents who depend on their own wells for a water supply sometimes find themselves with water unsafe to drink. Usually, the discovery of toxic chemicals in a private well happens in one of two ways: when the homeowner is diligent about getting their water tested regularly or when people suffer cancers and other illnesses until somebody finally sees a connection to contaminated water.
Public water supplies usually depend on groundwater as well. Many towns and cities have large municipal wells pumping water up from the aquifer to the water treatment plant. There is no shortage of towns who had to close one or more of their municipal wells due to toxic contamination traced to a landfill near the well or aquifer recharge area.
In Ellington, Connecticut, the local landfill is contaminating residential water wells. A group of chemicals known as PFAS was found in local residents’ well water. Even after the state found the contamination, it was six months until they started supplying them with bottled water. Until then, people either were supplying their own water or decided the risk of drinking contaminated water was one they accepted.
PFAS chemicals are also known as “Forever Chemicals” because they never degrade or go away. They will persist in humans forever. Environmentalists believe PFAS contamination is widespread, but the public is first finding out that many of them have been drinking contaminated water for years. Eventually, there will be enough evidence to strongly assert that millions of people will be affected by this.
The research done on the effects of PFAS being consumed in drinking water has shown a wide range of health problems. Some of them include reproductive and childhood developmental issues, kidney cancer, and diabetes.
In Bath Springs, Tennessee, the county landfill for years took in household trash and other waste from the residents in the region. In 1999, the county decided it made sense to privatize the landfill and allowed a private company to come in and operate the facility, and the county wastewater treatment facilities would take the leachate. The company that took over the landfill decided there was not enough money in taking household waste and decided to start accepting many types of highly toxic industrial waste. The small amount of leachate from the landfill grew exponentially. In fact, some of the waste was so toxic that the leachate the landfill produced killed off the bacteria at the treatment plant where the liquid was sent. After the landfill company found they no longer had any place nearby to send their leachate, they began spending hundreds of thousands to ship it out of state. Soon, they decided to walk away from the landfill. They simply decided to leave the thousands of tons of toxic materials they had brought in over the years behind and walk away, leaving the landfill and toxins for the county and the residents to deal with. There is much concern over groundwater contamination for the industrial chemicals disposed over the years.
In Camden, Tennessee only a short 35 miles from the Bath Springs landfill, another landfill also took in “special wastes” and allowed thousands of tons of hazardous aluminum waste and other highly toxic materials to be dumped at the landfill. When major environmental issues started occurring at the landfill, the operator decided it was cheaper to declare bankruptcy and walk away fro the landfill leaving the local area stuck with the problem.
In central Massachusetts, people living near the state’s largest landfill have a solvent used in industrial applications and products showing up in their well water. The landfill nearby has been in operation since before liners were required to slow leakage from the landfill. According to the EPA, 1,4 dioxane, the solvent in their well water, is considered a likely carcinogen. The landfill is disputing they are the cause of the contamination in spite of monitoring wells near the unlined section also showing high levels of 1,4 dioxane as well. The people with contaminated wells used their water for years because nobody ever said there was a problem until it was too late.
All active and many closed landfills have a distinct odor to them. The smell of rotting garbage is a cross between a rotten egg and an old, decayed melon. Some days the odor is strong enough to make people’s eyes water and not want to breathe.
Information on the New York State website health.ny.gov talks about studies done on communities near landfills to evaluate what health effects the landfill and exposure to the chemical emissions from the landfill is having on the residents. During the several months the studies were conducted, the health issues reported included eye, throat, and lung irritation, as well as nausea, sleeping issues, headaches, chest pains, and worsening asthma symptoms. All of these are consistent with exposure to hydrogen sulfide gas, one of the primary emissions from the nearby landfill.
Sulfur dioxide is another landfill gas, similar to hydrogen sulfide in some ways, but even more of a health threat and more damaging. The health issues associated with sulfur dioxide exposure range depending on the concentration in the air. Locations within a half mile of a landfill are affected more by these emissions than ones further away. Sulfur dioxide irritates the eyes and nose along with the throat and lungs. It also causes inflammation of the respiratory system. Doing any moderate physical activity increases the effects on the body. Symptoms may include chest pain when breathing, coughing, and breathing difficulty in general. Higher levels of sulfur dioxide can affect lung functioning, trigger asthma attacks, and can worsen heart disease in people who have heart issues by placing more stress on the cardiovascular system. Lastly, sulfur dioxide has the ability to react in the air with other chemicals and become small particles able to be inhaled deep into the lungs, which creates additional health issues.
In Northern New Jersey, a landfill in the town of Kearny has been subjected to enormous amounts of sulfur dioxide coming from a nearby landfill. The landfill is actually located right near a soccer field, and levels of the poisonous gas have been so high that the children have been ordered to stay off the field. In addition, many community events have needed to be canceled, and the residents are forced to live close to their houses due to the horrible odors. While the town awaits for the landfill to have a cap placed on it to reduce odors, they all suffer with exposure to the hazardous hydrogen sulfide until and if that happens.
The landfill industry claims they cover up the new trash every day with clean dirt to keep odors at a minimum. That may be true, but as the trash decomposes, it creates enormous amounts of methane gas. This smelly gas percolates up through the mountains of trash and into the air. Methane gas smells because of the large amount of sulfur dioxide in it. So much of this gas is produced by these mountains of garbage that it creates issues of its own.
Because of the need to handle such a high volume of methane, landfills have come up with a variety of systems to deal with it. Landfill operators needed to find a way to vent the methane gas out of the mound so it doesn’t accumulate and cause a landfill fire or explosion. A nice green hill on the side of the highway that has tall white pipes sticking up from the ground all over it–that’s a landfill trying to vent methane. Long lengths of perforated pipes are placed into the landfill to capture the methane gas as it rises from the mound of decomposing trash and is routed to the surface through those solid white pipes sticking out from the mound.
Some landfills have set up an igniter at the top of these pipes that burns off the gas when it gets to that point. They are often along highways and at night appear to be giant flares sticking out of a mound; they almost look like birthday candles.
These two methods are a bit outdated, though. Now, landfill operators more frequently capture the methane gas and use it as a fuel to power items at their facilities. These can be from items as simple as their electric lights to ones as complex as fleets of vehicles. That is great for people who happen to live nearby. Unfortunately, despite the growing number of landfills using their methane, most still simply vent off the stinky gas in the neighborhood air.
One of the more serious problems with living near an operating landfill is the large amount of dust created by the daily operation. A landfill is a giant pile of dirt with very little vegetation on it. Dirt roads crisscross all over the mountain of trash, carrying trucks and heavy machinery. Each day tons of dirt are dumped on top of thousands of tons of trash to try to cover up the fresh trash. Some landfills have water trucks spraying the roads in and around the landfills trying to hold the dust down, but they can never keep up.
The main purpose of the landfill is to hold solid waste being disposed of there. Significant amounts of the particulate matter comes from the activity of the hauling, dumping, and spreading of the waste on top of the landfill. Other sources of particulate matter come from additional activities such as any composting done on the site, waste unloading and sorting, and transport into and off of the disposal site by trucks.
The particulate matter that comes from landfills is not limited to dirt from the ground and dust in the air. Whatever is also decaying in the landfill or was dumped there gives off particles that are picked up in the wind and blown into the surrounding areas. Significant debris from decomposing trash, rotting food waste, construction debris, and medical waste if disposed at the landfill all contribute to particulate matter. People who live downwind of these landfills are exposed not just to the dirt and dust particles in the air they breathe, but also to particles of contaminants and pathogens from the wastes.
According to a study published in Science Daily, people who live near landfills and other waste sites frequently have a higher incidence of respiratory issues. Links were made between inhaling microorganisms and endotoxins present near these waste sites and respiratory issues associated with exposure to the bacteria.
All day long, a constant flow of trucks heads into the landfill and back out. Operating hours usually run from 7-5, so during the time they are open, some landfills have upwards of 500 trucks daily dumping loads of trash and other assorted materials. The noise created by the clanging of dump trucks and the rumbling on the roadways is in the background for everyone nearby the landfill. Many times the roads used by these trucks were not meant to hold the weight of the vehicles now using them. Small neighboring roads where the children used to play and people had walked their pets became dangerous during the daytime.
A significant health hazard is the large amount of exhaust fumes the trucks and equipment put into the air all day long. The chemicals in diesel exhaust are known to be carcinogenic. The long-term exposure to high volumes of this exhaust over months and years may cause respiratory problems in nearby residents and certainly will negatively impact people with conditions such as asthma and other breathing issues.
Near Boyertown, Pennsylvania, residents already burdened with heavy truck traffic due to the nearby landfill have now found out the landfill operators want to expand the landfill’s life. Originally expected to close in a few years, the landfill is requesting a ten year extension and permission to bring in another 16.8 billion pounds of trash. Truck traffic, already at around 250 trucks per day, could double to close to 500. In addition to the expansion, the landfill operators now want to expand operating from five days a week to seven.
Old leaking landfills are one of the biggest threats to human health and our water supply there is. Because many of these landfills have had industrial wastes dumped at them, they are toxic time bombs. Thousands of closed landfills are already designated as hazardous waste sites sitting on an official list, but waiting for action to be taken. Many hundreds more are on our nation’s Superfund list already known to be some of the worst in the country. They too, in many cases, are still seeping poisons into the surrounding areas.
What makes old landfills an extra threat is that some of them are already polluting residential areas, but the risk remains unknown. Some of these landfills were too small to make official lists or were abandoned so long ago that they aren’t on anyone’s radar. And yet, they remain full of toxic, carcinogenic chemicals slowly poisoning the neighboring areas.
In Long Beach, California, a mobile home park was built on top of an old municipal landfill that closed back in the 1970s. The garbage beneath the park is slowly decomposing under the 182 homes built on the landfill, causing the land under some homes to buckle and shift. In addition, the county public health agency found explosive levels of methane emitted from the decomposing trash in some areas of the park.
Residents living near an unlined old municipal landfill in Wheatfield, New York, are fighting the state and the town for allowing the disposal of hazardous industrial wastes for years without a liner to prevent seepage into the groundwater or surrounding soil. The landfill, already listed as a hazardous waste site, has allegedly leaked the toxic chemicals into the surrounding neighborhood. Some residents have found high levels of these in their homes. Attorneys representing the residents said some people have been sickened by the leak with illnesses including neurological issues, heart problems, reproductive disorders, and cancer.
Up by Richland, Washington, the Hanford Nuclear waste site is locally famous. But, many people do not know about the closed Pasco landfill, which in some ways is even more dangerous to the people and groundwater. This landfill, which was finally closed in 2001, had accepted tens of thousands of barrels of all types of waste. For many years officials hoped the waste was not leaking from the unlined landfill, but several studies are showing there are leaks The state wants to begin removing toxic substances from one section of the landfill. While the rest of the toxic chemicals continue to leak into the groundwater, 35,000 barrels are planned to be excavated and disposed of at another facility. Groundwater contamination in a plume extending 1.5 miles from the landfill to the Columbia River has been detected. The City of Pasco is only 1.5 miles away in a different direction. There are restrictions in place on wells in the area, and vapors are known to be coming up through the soil in some places.
The practice of disposing of special waste at regular landfills instead of designated disposal facilities is a sizable problem. We can say with certainty that the number of times this has been discovered happening is only a small fraction of the times it actually did. The high costs of disposing of hazardous waste, radioactive waste, medical waste, and other such waste drives the black market for illegal disposal. Sometimes the waste is repackaged to appear to be regular solid waste and dumped at the landfill. Other times the operator of the landfill is in on it and sends the illegal waste to a spot in the landfill where it is buried and covered up quickly.
At the Hunter’s Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco, an investigation found soil contaminated with dangerously high levels of radioactive waste was routinely sent to conventional landfills in California handling regular waste and not radioactive materials. The contractor bypassed radioactivity detection equipment at the cleanup site and simply dumped the waste at the landfills unknown to the operators.
The practice of illegally disposing of hazardous materials in unpermitted landfills extends to some companies we would never suspect to be involved. In California, the attorney general’s office concluded in an investigation that Target has improperly disposed of medical waste, pharmaceuticals, aerosols, batteries, and other regulated materials into landfills instead of proper disposal facilities. The state listed 2,038 items considered hazardous waste and 94 considered medical waste that the company unlawfully disposed of. Target Stores was fined $7.4 million for the violations.
A landfill near Williston, North Dakota, was ordered by the state health department to remove almost 950 tons of illegal material it had accepted. The material was radioactive and beyond the limits allowed for disposal at that facility. In addition, illegally disposed radioactive materials were discovered in at least two other landfills in the state.
In the beautiful town of Irvine, Kentucky, in the middle of town across the street from the school is the local landfill. The town found itself trying to figure out how to deal with almost 2,000 tons of radioactive waste that had been dumped at the landfill. The illegally dumped radioactive material came from a company in West Virginia, and radioactivity was measured at 340 times the legal limit for regular landfill disposal.
Illegal dumping seems to be getting more frequent with the thousands of tons of radioactive waste the fracking industry is now generating without enough disposal options. Since landfills are supposed to inspect and in some cases test the material coming in for disposal, either the landfill operators are derelict in their responsibilities, or they are knowingly accepting illegal shipments of materials that do not belong there. Fracking and the waste generated during the drilling operations create radioactive fluids and sludges that are banned from disposal at landfills in many states. Some states are trying to ship their waste to others to get around restrictions. Others, apparently, have resorted to breaking the law.
Medical waste is another type of waste illegally disposed of in landfills. According to the World Health Organization and other scientific agencies, medical waste contains viruses, parasites and pathogens that if not disposed of properly , can easily be transmitted to people. By improperly disposing these wastes in a landfill, the particles can be transported through the air off of the landfill and breathed in by people living nearby. Lung infections such as influenza and pneumonia are a couple examples.
Parasites thrive in waste, and parasitic infections from improperly disposed medical waste can be easily communicated to humans. This can happen both through skin contact and breathing in particles from waste that have been transported through the air off of the landfills. Lung infections such as tuberculosis, pneumonia, and influenza are caused by pathogens released into the air by medical waste.
In Ventura County, California, three hospitals were caught sending untreated medical and pharmaceutical waste to a landfill near Santa Paula. The waste contained items such as blood-soaked bandages and old intravenous tubes still partially filled with medications. The waste was disposed of as regular solid wastes instead of the regulated and controlled method that medical waste needs to be handled to avoid exposing people to potential deadly bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens. The California attorney general’s office said they were unable to determine how long this had been going on and how much waste was disposed of prior to this discovery.
These violations by different hospitals occurred over June and July, which spawns concerns over exposure to illness, bacteria, and drugs. Questions linger over how long the materials were dumped.
In Pennsylvania, medical waste was discovered being disposed of at a local landfill. Twelve UPMC (University of Pittsburgh) hospitals were discovered sending untreated medical waste still packed in bright red infectious material bags to the landfill instead of a medical waste facility. The bags of waste included bloody bandages, used needles, and body fluids. Neighbors living near the landfill saw the bags and told landfill employees, who confirmed the illegal waste and called the state environmental agency. Ultimately, they blamed it on poor employee training at the hospital. The landfill operator, Waste Management, was the same company who didn’t notice the 2.5 million gallons of radioactive fracking wastes illegally disposed of at their Oregon landfill either.
More than just an isolated instance, landfills do catch on fire sometimes, and when they do, it is powerful. With an enormous supply of material to feed it, these fires tend to get going very quickly. The large amount of plastic we throw out in our trash makes an excellent fuel, causing thick, billowing clouds of toxic black smoke that can drift for miles from the fire site. Sometimes a fire actually can start inside the landfill itself due to the extremely high temperatures created by thick layers of decomposing matter.
When one of these fires gets started, it is almost impossible to reach it due to most of these fires starting deep under the surface of the landfill. Extinguishing the fire sometimes is not possible. Many of the underground fires have burned for months and, in several cases, years.
In Bridgeton, Missouri, a fire in the landfill there has been burning for years. The landfill company ingeniously calls it a “subsurface smoldering event.” The bureaucratic language choices obscure how dangerous the situation actually is: Bridgeton has an uncontrollable fire burning in a landfill.
Because there is no real way of extinguishing the fire, it continues to smolder and move further through the landfill to new areas. Not too far away from this fire, another landfill is loaded with radioactive waste. It is a race to put out the fire before it reaches the radioactive waste. If the fire does spread that far, the results will be deadly. Officials from the landfill company expect the fire to burn until at least 2024. That is over a decade of a smoldering fire in a landfill near hundreds of residents exposed to the fumes everyday.
In Miami-Dade County, Florida the landfill caught on fire on a Sunday night and burned all week as firefighters struggled to extinguish it. The landfill again burst into flames days later, and the fire crews said it would be days until the winds died down when they hoped to get the fire under control. While no direct cause for the fire is known, spontaneous combustion from the heat of decomposing trash is a possibility. Health officials are warning people in the area, especially those with respiratory problems, to stay inside with their windows closed.
In Tucker, Georgia, part of the U.S. Highway 29 was shut down after an underground explosion damaged a section of the roadway. A HazMat team that responded to the scene found dangerously high levels of methane gas at the site of the explosion. The state environmental agency said the closed Crymes landfill located next to the highway was most likely the source of the methane gas that caused the explosion.
In Kentwood, Michigan, officials found methane gas outside the property of a closed landfill. There are about 150 homes within 1,500 feet of the landfill border where the leaking methane gas has the potential to build up in the residence and explode. The town has no idea how far from the landfill the explosive gas is leaking and is trying to prevent a major explosion while they figure out how to mitigate the problem. Residents who may be at risk were sent a notice in the mail advising them of the danger with no guarantee of a solution.
A landfill is an especially risky neighbor to have. Any one of a large number of issues can cause problems for your life and your health. I have never seen a landfill that did not have issues of one kind or another. Every one either had issues with odors and particulate matter or was leaking toxic waste into the aquifer underneath. At many of the landfills Tony and I visited, we saw evidence of documented disposal of hazardous wastes and other materials that create an imminent danger to the residents’ health and the local environment.
Landfills can operate for many years. Once they reach their so-called capacity, some can apply to expand in one direction or another: either higher if a permit is issued, or further out if property is available. There is never any guarantee that a landfill will close on any projected date. We also have seen closed landfills reopen. People who rejoiced once the old landfill closed were shocked to find there was a new operator willing to reopen and expand an already permitted operation.
If there was a hazard that had the potential to not just make your everyday life miserable but also potentially ruin your health, that would be a landfill. Avoiding any type of these operations can only be to your benefit. There is no good reason to locate yourself in a position where harm may come so easily. At minimum, we would suggest placing at least four miles between you and any type of landfill, closed or operating.