TOWN OF MENASHA News: Standing in the parks department shop with a Honeywell gas meter in his hands, Randy Gallow slides a metal cover away from a manhole grate in the floor and stands over it for several seconds.

“There’s nothing there,” said Gallow, a streets superintendent for the Town of Menasha, looking at the meter’s digital reading.

He repeats the test in work areas, corners and secluded areas of the building where the air system might not naturally dissipate any gas concentrations.

Since last November, when potentially dangerous levels of methane were discovered in a landfill near the town’s municipal complex, meters have been used frequently to check for evidence of methane gas inside work areas.

While town officials and hired consultants have yet to find methane anywhere inside the buildings, several newly installed outdoor vapor probes have registered methane levels in excess of the lower explosive limit of 5 percent methane.

“If left unmanaged, it could be an explosive situation,” said Christopher Rog, principal geologist/senior project manager for Sand Creek Consultants of Rhinelander. “But we feel like we’ve got it managed.”

In order to further safeguard town employees and the town’s multimillion dollar investment in its facilities, the Town Board this week authorized borrowing up to $527,000 to pursue installation of methane gas mitigation systems in three areas.

“Solid waste and water in all landfills creates methane,” Rog said.

With elevated methane readings so close to the town’s vehicle storage building, he said it is likely that methane has migrated underneath.

A vapor extraction system is the top priority, along with passive venting, both of which should take about three weeks and be completed by the end of August, Rog said.

“These are permanent solutions we are installing,” he said.

Two parallel trenches, one 600 feet and the other about 700 feet, will be dug about 4 feet deep with vent wells that go down to the bedrock spaced every 15 feet. Rog said one trench is connected to an active blower system while the other is connected to an air intake system.

Community Development Director George Dearborn said the town’s E. Shady Lane landfill is split into three disposal sites on the western portion of 116 acres of farmland and gravel pit the town acquired in the late 1960s.

The former town dump is a 12-acre site northwest of the municipal complex. It was closed and capped in the mid-1970s.

A second site, known as the town’s sanitary landfill, consists of two trenches west of Municipal Drive. It was closed in the mid-1980s.

A third site is located immediately north of the town’s Vehicle Storage Building, a large hill on a four-acre site known as the Kimberly-Clark Corp. “greenings pile.” It contains paper sludge from the former K-C Lakeview mill deposited between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s.

Rog said the methane is coming from two primary sources: the K-C greenings pile and the town’s sanitary landfill.

While the town owns the land underneath, K-C owns the “greenings pile” and is responsible for maintaining it. In November, a technician doing routine monitoring smelled landfill gas and confirmed the presence of elevated levels of methane, which was reported to the state Department of Natural Resources and the town.

Since then, K-C has invested a significant amount of money to mitigate methane levels and extend the life of the landfill by replacing the cap, repairing a collection system and expanding its methane collection system, said Christine Spella, K-C communications manager.

“We continue to share information and best practices with the town and the WDNR and are confident their remediation efforts will safely and efficiently reduce the methane levels across the town’s landfill site,” Spella said.

“We will continue to monitor and manage all aspects of the greenings pile moving forward.”

Town Administrator Jeff Sturgell said he does not think there was “any real danger” but town officials have taken the precautionary measures nonetheless.

“Let’s deal with the issue now so that it doesn’t ever become an issue in the future,” Sturgell said.

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The term “final storage quality” was first defined twenty years ago by Baccini and Henseler and other members of a Swiss working group on landfills. In the meantime, the definition has been modified by several authors in various published papers.

In essence, final storage quality is used to imply an “environmentally sound flux/load for short, medium and long term periods”, to use one of the academic versions that I rather like for its brevity.

Which criteria should be used to determine when the “Final Storage Quality” has been reached, is being debated.

What will be the final contaminating parameter of the large number of potential pollutants in a landfill at the end of that that long awaited transition from active aftercare management to passive aftercare?

Which contaminant will be the most critical in the long term, which when it is dissipated, we can all stop concerning ourselves that what was once a landfill no longer has a potential to harm the environment which surrounds it?

Well, having I hope now wetted your curiosity, I am going to disappoint you by saying that I don’t think that academia really yet knows for certain the answer to that. Given the huge number of sanitary (lined and capped landfills) now being filled around the world as I write this, I think we should all think hard and get a little worried for our offspring.

However, two aspects of long term landfill which are of direct economic importance and about which more can be said, are:

1. The longevity of economic landfill gas production for energy production,
2. And, (for those tasked with landfill aftercare duties) it is from the point of economic aftercare, how the escape of the remaining methane to atmosphere without first oxidising it, can be achieved.

It is important to achieve “final storage quality” while consistently burning/flaring the methane in landfill gas, or in another way oxidising the methane to prevent serious climate change implications.

We can be sure that in the long-term, gas produced by landfills will be characterized by low methane content.

The methane content and rate of gas production will be so low that there will be scarcely any possibility for its use in economically-sound energy recovery procedures and yet it will still amount to a significant discharge due to the very long period of its slow discharge.

There is no escaping that the gas produced in the long tail of the “elk” requires treatment due to its global warming potential.

New low-cost technologies must be found, either to extend the phase of profitable landfill gas utilization, or methods developed to, if possible, reduce the landfill gas aftercare phase and mitigate long-term emissions.

At our sister landfill gas web site we have started to look at possible aftercare strategies with respect to dwindling landfill gas, and we have written about:

• The proportion of total Active Landfill Gas Recovery that can be economically utilised by active landfill gas extraction
• The developing concept of bio-oxidation of landfill gas instead of flaring, either in specially designed vessels or within modified landfill caps during landfill aftercare.

Click on the linked text in the above lines to read more.

Their plans for assistance in “Helping businesses use resources more efficiently and divert more waste from landfill”, was unveiled last week as one of the top targets for the Environment Agency over the next five years.

Launched on day two of the Agency’s annual conference, the new corporate strategy Creating A Better Place 2010-2015 also outlines the key waste-related challenges that are facing businesses and communities over the next five years and what needs to be done to meet those challenges including:

Hazardous waste:

* Overview: There has been a step change in the management of hazardous waste since the banning of co-disposal and mixing pits. Government has also consulted on a proposed Strategy for Hazardous Waste Management in England – a move that will lead to further improvements in hazardous waste treatment.
* What next? Hazardous waste poses particular risks to the environment and health so it is especially important that it is managed properly. Hazardous waste needs to be designed out at source, reduced and recycled wherever possible and residues managed safety.

Biodegradable waste:

* Overview: More than 100 million tonnes of bio-waste is produced in the UK every year. Much of this is recycled by spreading on to land.
* What next? Biowaste sent to landfill generates methane which is 20 times more potent than CO2. As well as needing to reduce biowaste production we want more of this valuable resource to be turned into energy and soil conditioners through greater uptake of anaerobic digestion.

Waste Crime:

* Overview: Hefty fines and tough sentences have been handed out to waste criminals in 454 prosecutions over the past year as a result of the Environment Agency’s crackdown on waste crime.
* What next? Waste crime is unacceptable. It puts our environment and our health at risk and undercuts legitimate businesses. We want to see businesses taking much more responsibility for the safe and lawful management of their waste – and the courts still need to make sure crime does not pay.

Head of Waste and Resources Liz Parkes said: “Last year the total environmental costs of waste sent to landfill and incinerators in the UK rather than being recycled were £336million.

“But the latest estimates are that UK companies could save in the region of £6.4 billion a year by using resources more efficiently. Collaborative work by the Environment Agency and WRAP to set new quality standards for waste recovery could result in 17 million tonnes of waste being diverted and over 2 million tonnes of carbon and 14 million tonnes of raw materials being saved.

“Good progress is being made towards municipal waste and packaging recovery targets. Regulated companies have also reduced the amount of waste they produce by 14% since 2005. But more can be done.

“The bottom line is population growth and consumption patterns are placing an unsustainable burden on the planet’s resources. Add climate change to the mix and we have no choice. Businesses must treat waste a valuable resource. In turn, we are working to make it easier for businesses to do the right thing and taking tough action against those who flout the law.”

Full article at The Environment Agency web site.