Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork

Chapter 5: Modernising municipal wasteIn practice, the minimum requirements are often not met. As a result of the history ofgross neglect and the low priority and consequent under funding of waste management,the situation on the ground is far from the theory. Many municipal dumps are of suchdesign that they cannot be permitted under the minimum requirements. Moreover,having a permit is no indication of being in compliance. According to DEAT [2007a],there are over 2,000 municipal waste facilities of which only 530 are permitted. Thisdoes not include the estimated 15,000 unrecorded communal sites in rural areas.Waste managers generally refer to permitted dumps as ‘landfills’, while un-permittedones are called ‘dumps’. Things are not so clear cut, however. Many permitted sitesare in fact dumps that have been ‘permitted for closure’. This is a way of dealing withthe legacy of neglect. It brings dumps which have no hope of meeting the minimumrequirements within the legal regulatory system and sets the terms for closing them.Until closure, however, it legalises the operation and creates the conditions fornegotiated non-compliance. Ecological modernisation is nothing if not flexible and itseems that ‘closure’ could be negotiated into a lengthy process.The distance between theory and practice is clearly illustrated in the case studies below.Some of the common issues include:- Dumps are not isolated from the environment by liners and have eitherrudimentary or no leachate collection, no leachate treatment and no gasgathering. Landfills are frequently built on top of old dumps. The landfillis lined but the old dump moulders beneath it. Leachate and gas gatheringsystems in the landfill part may or may not be well maintained.- Managers do not know what is in the waste body they are responsible for asthere are few historical records. Even after permitting, landfill records are notnecessarily well-kept.- Landfills and some dumps have weighbridges. Better managed dumps mostlyrely on estimates of waste quantities by sight while others do not monitorincoming waste.- Inspection of incoming waste is similarly uneven and generally uncertain.Sampling waste is notoriously difficult while smuggling hazardous wasteunder cover of general waste is easy. In addition, neighbours suspect landfillmanagement of complicity in allowing illegal waste dumping while the‘de-listing’ of hazardous waste blurs the lines between what is allowed ordisallowed.- 134 - groundWork - Wasting the Nation