Dive summary:
- While fixing a multi-year problem with smells coming from the SPSA Regional Landfill in Virginia, officials have stumbled across two new bigger problems just as they fixed the first.
- In one cell of the landfill, temperatures as high as 190 degrees were found flaring underground, the temperatures are hot enough to burn the protective liner and leak toxic pollutants into the ground; some extraction wells have already melted and collapsed from the heat.
- In another cell, potentially explosive methane gas is seeping excessively from the ground and officials have no idea why.
From the article:
"It's a very strange situation," said Milt Johnston, who regulates waste and landfills for the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. "The odors, the temperatures, the gas. There's a bunch of issues out there we're all trying to unravel."
Tens of thousands of public dollars are being spent on consulting engineers, who have been analyzing the landfill's quirks for years now, and have more work to do. For example, the state is awaiting results of another study to determine whether the protective plastic liner on the bottom of the landfill has been compromised. ...
