NWRA releases 2021 federal legislative and regulatory agenda

The National Waste & Recycling Association (NWRA) has released its 2021 Federal Legislative & Regulatory Agenda, which covers the first session of the 117th Congress. The agenda, created as a resource for congressional offices and regulatory agencies to use, updates the waste and recycling industry’s policy positions on important federal issues.

NWRA added new policy positions on topics such as environmental justice, extended producer responsibility, climate, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, electric vehicle tax credits, carbon capture tax incentives, complainant conflict of interest, increasing the role of women in the industry, Department of Labor overtime rules and the Department of Labor persuader rule. The NWRA also revived its positions on tax extenders and Occupational Safety and Health Administration reporting requirements.

NWRA removed its positions on tax corrections legislation, regulatory accountability and China’s recyclable materials import standards and ban. In doing so, NWRA eliminated its “International Trade Issues” category and moved the position on import and export of waste and recycling materials to the “Waste and Recycling Issues” category.

Nineteen of the 40 positions have full-length policy papers approved by NWRA’s Government Affairs Committee that have been published and linked to the agenda.

Republic Services cancels pioneering electric truck deal with Nikola

Just months after Republic Services announced it signed a binding agreement on Aug. 10 to purchase 2,500 electric refuse vehicles from Phoenix-based electric vehicle maker Nikola Corp., Nikola Corp. issued a release Dec. 23 announcing the partnership was off.

“After considerable collaboration and review, both companies determined that the combination of the various new technologies and design concepts would result in longer than expected development time, and unexpected costs. As a result, the program is being terminated resulting in the cancellation of the previously announced vehicle order,” Nikola stated in a press release.

“This was the right decision for both companies given the resources and investments required,” Nikola CEO Mark Russell said via the release. “We support and respect Republic Services’ commitment to achieving environmentally responsible, sustainable solutions for their customers. Nikola remains laser-focused on delivering on our battery-electric and fuel-cell electric commercial truck programs, and the energy infrastructure to support them.”

The announcement of the canceled deal comes on the heels of months of turbulence for the vehicle manufacturer and its founder, Trevor Milton. On Sept. 10, short-seller Hindenburg Research, which dubs itself a financial research firm, published a scathing report on the manufacturer titled, “Nikola: How to Parlay an Ocean of Lies Into a Partnership With the Largest Auto OEM in America.” In the report, the research firm claims Milton misled partners by falsely claiming to have proprietary technology and for engaging in numerous acts of deception related to the capabilities of the company’s electric vehicles.

“We have never seen this level of deception at a public company, especially of this size,” the authors of the report write.

A week after the Hindenburg report was published, Milton resigned as executive chairman and board member of the company. In November, Nikola announced the company and Milton had received grand jury subpoenas from the Department of Justice, and that the company had received a grand jury subpoena from the New York County District Attorney’s Office based on the Hindenburg report.

Republic initially announced the agreement to purchase 2,500 electric waste and recycling collection trucks from Nikola with estimated delivery dates starting in 2023. The deal was expandable to 5,000 vehicles over the life of the agreement. (Read the details of the agreement in the Sept. issue of Waste Today).

At the time, Republic noted that the deal marked “the industry’s first large-scale commitment to fleet electrification.” The parties didn’t share the total cost of the investment, but Milton ballparked Republic’s total investment between $1 billion to $2 billion.

Milton noted how the electric waste vehicles would feature 2,000 horsepower (as opposed to the 350 to 500 horsepower that today’s diesel vehicles typically boast), would have zero emissions and be noticeably quieter than diesel or natural gas alternatives.

Milton also said the company was working in collaboration with Republic to help design the vehicles for specific use in the waste industry.

Republic Services President Jon Vander Ark said that Republic had been looking at investing in electric vehicles for several years and had compared all vendors in the space before selecting Nikola a little more than a year ago for this significant commitment.

In a statement following the termination of the Nikola deal, Republic stated that, “We continue to believe that electrification is the future.” The company cited ongoing partnerships with Mack and Peterbilt, and its recently reported investment in California battery startup Romeo Systems, as evidence of its desire to continue pursuit of electric vehicle technology for use in waste applications.

The Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA) released a policy in January 2020 regarding the care of landfills once the post-closure care period has ended.

That policy, “Technical Policy 9.4—The Long-Term Management of Municipal Solid Waste Landfills,” dictates that landfill owners and operators should be responsible for some upkeep in order to preserve the public’s wellbeing. The policy also says there should be a process to end long-term management obligations when site-specific monitoring data shows organic or functional stability with the final cover system in place.

Specifically, the policy advocates for three positions:

• Following termination of the regulatory post-closure care period, as recommended in T-9.3 Termination of Municipal Solid Waste Landfill Post-Closure Care Requirements, there should be provisions or institutional controls satisfactory to state, provincial or local regulatory agencies to provide long-term management for closed landfills to ensure the final landfill cover system and other environmental control systems are effective in continuing to be protective of human health and the environment. These provisions may be developed through instruments, such as deed restrictions, environmental covenants (such as those in compliance with the Unified Environmental Covenants Act), and/or a maximum of standard landfill regulatory oversight, to be determined on a case-by-case basis, based in part on the risk potential of the landfill.
• Regulatory agencies and the landfill owner/operator should recognize that there are potential costs associated with facilities in long-term management, including but not limited to, inspections to verify the integrity of the landfill cover system and other environmental control systems, and/or corrective actions. Provisions identifying responsible parties for these costs should exist on a case-by-case basis as determined by the regulatory agency, landfill owner/operator, and/or host community, as applicable.
• The long-term management of a landfill facility may cease provided all parties involved (owner, municipality and state and provincial regulatory agencies) agree that based on site-specific data, that the organic or functionally stabilized waste mass poses an acceptable level of risk to potential receptors.

Policy background

SWANA’s policy was developed, in part, to provide some cohesion among state laws that can vary significantly regarding post-closure care.

“Some states had organic stability measures put in place, some states had functional stability requirements put in place,” says Tim Mitchell, former division director of SWANA’s Landfill Management Technical Division and current senior project manager with Civil & Environmental Consultants Inc. “The overwhelming majority had no requirements except Subtitle D.”

© ilyaska | Stock.adobe.com

In the United States, federal Subtitle D landfill regulations were introduced in 1991. Since then, few regulatory agencies have established guidance or funding requirements for long-term management of landfills after the completion of post-closure care periods.

SWANA’s policy was put in place to determine the need for individual sites, and as such, took some time and effort to draft. Mitchell says there was a good deal of planning and consulting with outside sources during the draft process to make sure the policy covered the right bases.

“We took all external feedback into consideration, and we also consulted with the Environmental Research and Education Foundation (EREF), which is a good source of industry-driven research,” he adds.

Mitchell says EREF produced a functional stability model that demonstrated what needed to be evaluated and identified when a landfill had come to the end of its post-closure care period.

In regards to individual landfills, Mitchell says site-specific data can help inform what measures might be required for sufficient upkeep.

“I think if you were looking for specific data to evaluate, [you should be looking at] the groundwater monitoring data, the landfill gas data, leachate, and stability and cover integrity,” he says.

Mitchell adds that landfill operators should assess the data trends that have developed over time to help inform them of actions that may or may not be necessary. He says information related to groundwater, leachate and landfill gas will show trends, and if levels of emissions aren’t increasing (or have stopped altogether), that could impact the need for monitoring when that post-closure period ends.

“It doesn’t help a site operator to just start the process of data evaluation right at the end of post-closure care,” he says. “You can’t just say, ‘Hey, we’re at year 29 [of the landfill’s existence], let me show you this year’s data that points in the right direction.’ That analysis and that argument needs to be made based on years of prior information.”

How state regulations factor in

SWANA’s policy was drafted to be applicable nationwide. Since state regulations vary, Mitchell says SWANA’s policy can be a guide for all operators irrespective of location. This policy establishes a baseline of compliance that can offer direction for ensuring operators remain responsible for landfills until they are shown to be stable.

“The intent of this SWANA policy was to advocate [for something comprehensive since] every state has something different,” he says. “A lot of states really don’t have a formal policy as to how to evaluate the end of post-closure care.”

Mitchell says that if it’s determined through functional stability trends that the landfill is no longer a threat to human health or environment, operators wouldn’t be required to demonstrate their oversight anymore to SWANA.

“They would have to get [approval], of course, from each individual state regulator to make sure they’re on board with [adopting SWANA’s policy],” he says. “But they would no longer have to submit anything [to prove compliance].”

What this means for long-term care

Mitchell says this policy is important because there needs to be a standard in place to protect human health and the environment, and Subtitle D landfill regulations aren’t enough.

“Those [landfill care] expectations need to be set from both an owner and regulatory standpoint, and probably also an accounting standpoint,” he says. “Just so people know that after this post-closure care period is over, your obligations are not automatically relieved.”

Regarding the applicability of SWANA’s policy, Mitchell adds, “It establishes what the minimum requirements would be for maintaining care, and the SWANA policy is also general enough [to cover different sites in different locations]. If there are site-specific requirements that are necessary to be followed, the policy allows for that.”

Overall, Mitchell says the goal was for SWANA to establish a policy that covered all the bases but was general enough that state regulations weren’t ignored and could still factor into the long-term monitoring that was needed in each case.

The author is the web editor of Waste Today and can be reached at kcunningham@gie.net.

Preserving landfill capacity is a foremost objective for today’s landfill operators thanks to increasing complications with both permitting of new sites and expansion of existing ones.

In an effort to maximize the capacity at its 300-acre landfill in Manchester, New Jersey, Ocean County Landfill Corp. began to look at options in the mid-2000s for preserving space at the site.

The company first looked at redeveloping an older, unlined portion of its landfill built between 1972 and 1985, which comprised around 60 acres. The original goal was to expand capacity and extend the lifespan without requiring a horizontal or vertical expansion beyond what the landfill was presently permitted for.

“The footprint of the landfill is pretty well-established, and we don’t really have the luxury of going out any farther without encroaching on neighborhoods and wetlands and things like that,” explains Martin Ryan, vice president of engineering at Ocean County Landfill Corp. “So, as we were looking at the lifespan of our facility and trying to figure out ways to squeeze a little more time out of it, we thought that certainly a vertical expansion was something that was a possibility, but that’s not a definite thing that will get approved by the regulators. Also, I think there’s some sensitivity to the surrounding community, as well. You don’t want to have this huge mountain of garbage sticking up out of the pine trees [that surround the landfill], so we had kind of settled on our final elevation with some sensitivity to the surrounding community.”

Ryan says the company first discussed an overliner design where new waste could be placed on top of the existing capped areas within the vertical limits the site was approved for. In order to assess the viability of this, Ocean County Landfill Corp. had waste composition tests performed. The primary goals were to gauge the thickness of cover soils and to obtain waste characterization, condition and stage of decomposition data.

“The firm we hired did a biomethane potential (BMP) test, which basically said that the waste was largely ‘cooked,’ for lack of a better word,” Ryan says. “This meant it was largely decomposed. The testing also found the mass should be stable and not prone to a lot of settlement, while simultaneously showing that there was quite a bit of cover soil there.”

Ryan says, at the time, the landfill was importing almost every yard of soil it was using for cover and capping construction. Between the desire to minimize the height of waste at the landfill and the ample supply of cover soil that would eliminate the need to outsource from third parties, Ocean County Landfill Corp. decided that landfill mining, not installing an overliner, was the best course of action.

Ryan says that, at the time, no landfill mining project of the scale the company was proposing had been undertaken in New Jersey. This necessitated both ample planning and time needed to secure permitting.

“We were looking at mining basically all of the waste that’s in that old, 60-acre part of the landfill, but we looked at it as a win-win because we would be keeping our construction crews busy with mining during times in between building baseliners and caps, we would create a lot of cover soil for us to help offset the need to then import all that soil, and then we’d also develop a new area for future landfilling, which we hope will allow us to operate until around 2036 or 2037, [beyond the original estimated close date of 2024],” Ryan says.

Mining for opportunity

After going through all the regulatory hurdles to be approved by the state, Ryan says that they began screening operations in 2014. They developed a plan for phased excavation and base liner construction that constituted three phases, which would stretch out over approximately 15 years.

Lawrence Kiesel, vice president of construction at Ocean County Landfill, says before commencing operations, the company evaluated several different types of screens for the project. The company demoed both shaker deck-type screens where waste was placed in the top and fines and dirt filtered out the bottom as well as trommel screens that spun to accomplish the same goal.

Ocean County ultimately settled on a Doppstadt SM720K trommel screen since the circular rotation was able to better separate the dirt from the waste. Kiesel notes that the company uses an excavator to dig to a depth of around 40 to 45 feet. The excavator then transfers the waste to an off-road end-dump truck so the material can be moved from the area that is being mined to a separate screening station, where another excavator feeds the hopper of the trommel screen. A wheel loader is then used to load the resulting material into off-road end-dump trucks, which transport the 2-inch-minus cover soil and over 2-inch waste materials, respectively, back to the site’s active landfill cell.

Kiesel notes that while their process has become synchronized over time, there has been some trial and error to find the best method to effectively mine the material. He says they originally attempted to load material from the landfill directly into the trommel screen via an excavator, but found that, instead, first loading this waste into a truck to be screened in another location yielded greater efficiencies without exposing the trommel to damage from bulky materials like engine blocks, tree stumps and other sizable debris.

According to Ryan, Ocean County’s landfill mining work is conducted in spurts throughout the year so that they’re ensuring that cells are available for waste placement while at the same time they’re economically “minimizing the impacts to the facility’s funding requirements for routine landfill construction and closure/post-closure care.”

To meet regulatory approval, crews at the Ocean County Landfill are required to comply with rigorous safety standards to protect both operators and neighboring citizens.

Workers conduct hydrogen sulfide tests to ensure emissions from C&D wallboard landfilled at the site aren’t being generated as waste is uncovered. Air monitoring for other emissions is also part of the process.

Kiesel says workers are required to don appropriate PPE including hard hats, safety vests and eye protection. The company also works to limit personnel around the trommel screen while in operation due to particulate matter in the air. Finally, third-party certified labs routine test the soil coming off the screen to make sure that it’s in compliance with criteria outlined by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection for the site’s cover soil acceptance plan.

A purposeful plan

Kiesel notes that in the six-plus years they have been mining at the site, they’ve made some adjustments to maximize production and efficiency, but haven’t encountered any major difficulties or setbacks. When all is said and done, Ocean County Landfill Corp. will be excavating and screening approximately 4 million cubic yards of material from the 60-acre parcel.

This project is estimated to create an additional 6 million cubic yards of new capacity, allow placement of waste in the existing landfill cross section with modern landfill techniques and compaction, and recover approximately 2 million cubic yards of cover soil.

"It’s an expensive project, but I think if you look at the cost versus the benefits, there is no doubt it is well worth the effort,” –Martin Ryan, vice president of engineering, Ocean County Landfill Corp.

While landfill mining is a strategy that has been used for years to free up airspace, uncover commodities of value, reconstruct a site or remove potentially problematic wastes, it isn’t a strategy that is as commonly deployed in the U.S. as it is overseas.

Ryan says that the suitability of landfill mining is very site-specific, and depends on the following: timing of need for additional airspace; the value of the airspace, reclaimed soil and possible recyclables; the age of the waste; environmental and permitting issues governing the site; and financial considerations determined by a cost/benefit analysis.

Ryan says that although landfill mining is a process that requires commitments including manpower, time, equipment investment, dealing with permitting obstacles, and dedication to avoiding environmental issues and complaints from neighboring citizens, the process is one Ocean County Landfill Corp. has fully embraced.

“We’re the only privately owned and operated landfill left in the state of New Jersey, and we’re the only landfill facility that’s located in the county of Ocean—we’re basically written in the county’s solid waste management plan as the lone disposal site,” Ryan says. “From the perspective of trying to keep this facility open, to serve the needs of the county that we’re in, obviously that comes with responsibility of trying to do what we can to serve the needs of the residents as long as we can. And without taking on this landfill mining project, we certainly would be closing up shop a lot sooner. It’s an expensive project, but I think if you look at the cost versus the benefits, there’s no doubt it’s well worth the effort.

“We are pleased with the results and progress to date. We believe extending the lifespan of our facility to continue to meet the waste disposal needs of Ocean County for an additional 10-plus years is well worth the effort and expense.”

The author is the editor of Waste Today and can be reached at aredling@gie.net.