Waste
Florida’s Indian River County (IRC) Solid Waste Disposal District (SWDD) facility has secured a long-term, on-site solution for managing its growing volumes of landfill leachate.
The county’s strategic service partner, Heartland Water Technology, will furnish, install and operate a state-of-the-art leachate treatment facility using Heartland’s award winning Heartland Concentrator™. The plant has commenced construction and will begin service early next year.
The SWDD generates approximately 25,000 gallons per day of landfill leachate. As the landfill grows, this volume is expected to increase. Like many landfills, the SWDD currently sends leachate to the county’s Utility Wastewater Treatment Facility and has started trucking concentrated leachate to an off-site disposal plant across the State at considerable expense. In addition to adding more vehicles to the road, off-site disposal is fraught with uncertainty, as disposal outlets are cutting off leachate at an accelerating rate. Once cut off from a primary disposal solution, costs can rise severalfold.
Uneasy with off-site disposal of landfill leachate, the IRC board of county commissioners, through its leadership at the SWDD, sought a long term solution that would eliminate off-site disposal of leachate, lock in a long term cost-certain solution, and improve its community and environmental stewardship.
After a rigorous selection process, including a third party expert evaluation of several alternate disposal treatments, the SWDD selected an on-site evaporation solution from Heartland Water Technology. SWDD’s decision was based on Heartland’s complete leachate management service offering, its proven track record with on-site leachate treatment, and a highly successful on-site pilot project, validated by the SWDD’s engineering consulting expert, Geosyntec. “The county’s leadership team showed great vision with this project,” said Earl Jones, chief executive officer of Heartland Water Technology. “Bettering the community and environment, treating the leachate on-site and locking in solution costs for the county for years to come is good government.”
On-site treatment also delivers operational and economic benefits for the county. “Leachate management is a major challenge for every landfill,” said Himanshu Mehta, managing director for the Indian River County board of county commissioners. “Our leachate management solution takes away this challenge for the county allowing focus on what we do best, which is the safe, professional management of disposal operations.”
Published in the November 2022 Edition