Bob Phaneuf of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYS DEC), informs us that the Division of Solid & Hazardous Materials is in the process of an on-going rule-making to update the State’s Solid Waste Management Regulations, 6 NYCRR Part 360.
Bob tells us that these regulations have undergone a major rewrite to separate the existing SWM facility regulations (Part 360) into a separate series of Parts. This effort resulted in all of the landfill related requirements being consolidated into a proposed version of regulations tiltled: 6 NYCRR Part 363 Solid Waste Disposal Facilities. The Division has been seeking input from the solid waste industry groups on their proposed revisions for almost three years and are currently at a point where they will soon be posting a preliminary draft version of these regulations on the Department’s web site to solicit preliminary public input prior to initiating their formal rule-making process.
Bob has also told us of some the proposed changes that they hope will improve upon the long-term performance of landfill liner systems:
- The proposed landfill liner regulations will include geoelectric integrity surveys on both the secondary and primary liners after the soil drainage layers have been placed on each of the double composite liners. The regs will require liner intregity surveys to be conducted on all liner system surfaces with slopes of 10% or less – essentially the floors of cells. Bob reports that they have decided to do this in an effort to address construction related defects caused by placement of the drainage materials that otherwise go unnoticed by conventional CQA processes.
- In an effort to address the concerns of the geomembrane installation industry for conducting destructive seam tests too frequently, Bob has indicated on slopes of 10% or less (basically, the areas that will be tested using a liner integrity survey) that the design engineer has the ability to waive the need to conduct destructive seam testing in these areas; otherwise, destructive seam tesing will be required to be done every 1000′ in the revised regulations.
- The primary liner (upper) action leakage rates of 20 gpad (200 lphd), as required by the existing regulations will be continued to be the acceptable operational threshold for primary liner performance. If this rate is exceeded, the regulations require a proactive contingency plan focused on resolving the problem. Associated with this is another change in the proposed regs that will now require that the secondary leachate collection and removal system (the leakage detection system) to be designed for a maximum design flow rate of 1000 gpad (10,000 lphd) including a required detection time of 24 hrs. This will facilitate more accurate and rapid reporting of primary liner performance.
- The proposed regs will no longer allow the use of a total geosynthetic drainage systems in the secondary leachate collection and removal system (leak detection layer) on slopes of 10% or less. This change is a clarification to the existing regulations and will require a 12 in. (300 mm) layer of high permeability sand (10-2 cm/s), above which a GCL is required to make up the upper composite liner, so there will be a good electrically conductive medium under the primary geomembrane. The 12 in. (300mm) thickness of secondary leachate collection layer on slopes of 10% or less will improve the constructability of the lower composite liner system helping to ensure good direct contact of the geomembrane to the compacted clay barrier portion of the lower composite liner system.
Bob indicated that there have been many other changes proposed to the State’s landfill regulations addressing; geotechnical stability design requirements, landfill closure requirements, landfill siting, bioreactor landfill concepts, comprehensive odor control requirements including required horizontal gas collection systems for all municipal solid waste landfills, to mention a few other areas of interest.
The direct link to the NYS DEC’s website’s posting of the draft regulations is http://www.dec.state.ny.us/website/dshm/sldwaste/360rev.htm. Please visit this link and send your comments to the Department. They will accept comments on the pre-proposal draft until July 7, 2006. Comments and proposed changes may be emailed to swreg@gw.dec.state.ny.us or mailed to the following address:
Melissa Treers, P.E.
Division of Solid & Hazardous Materials
625 Broadway, 9th Floor
Albany, New York 12233-7253
Copies of the Part 360 series pre-proposal draft are also available on CD by contacting the above.
