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Yet another clock starts ticking down

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Illinois

* 21 years sounds so very far away, until you consider how long it takes to get a permit to build a landfill (not to mention finding a willing area) and how much we love to procrastinate in this state…

State officials say existing Illinois landfills have capacity to take trash for another 21 years.

The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency released its landfill report for 2014 on Wednesday. The report found that the state had 39 active landfills that took in more than 44 million gate cubic yards of waste during 2014. A gate cubic yard is the volume of waste entering the landfill’s gate.

The landfills reported that there were 942 million gate cubic yards of combined remaining capacity as of Jan. 1. The state EPA says that means landfill life expectancy in Illinois is 21 years based on 2014 disposal rates.

posted by Rich Miller
Thursday, Jul 2, 15 @ 12:18 pm

Comments

The news that the state/country has only x years of space left in its current landfills is about as fresh as the news that the pension funds are not fully funded. That has been true as far back as anyone cares to look.

Comment by Anon. Thursday, Jul 2, 15 @ 12:22 pm
Well, we could just keep adding to Mt. Livingston until it gets as tall as Pike’s Peak, then build a ski lift and resort to market Pontiac as the next Aspen. /s

There were 3 proposals to build landfills in Kendall County in recent years, and much public opposition. The city and suburbs would rather send their garbage downstate than take care of it themselves, but that’s human nature. Recycling and conservation, especially in the form of separating the usable at the landfill and by using less and more biodegradable packaging, will hopefully be part of the solution. But there will always be a need to throw away stuff and finding a way or place to dispose of it.

Comment by Six Degrees of Separation Thursday, Jul 2, 15 @ 12:30 pm
It is a symptom of the problem, not the problem. Everyone wants regulations and programs. The EPA is systematically shutting down or making it impossible for landfills to operate. Great, we want to protect the environment. The problem is, no one wants to think about the solution.

Our society’s inability to deviate from my position and move toward solution based thinking is causing us to devolve.

Comment by the Patriot Thursday, Jul 2, 15 @ 12:31 pm
Plus the lawsuits that come from the community. Just look at the Cortland landfill in DeKalb County.

Comment by NIU Grad Thursday, Jul 2, 15 @ 12:36 pm
In the spirit of this week…How much capacity is there on the Busch Stadium site?

Comment by A guy Thursday, Jul 2, 15 @ 12:39 pm
Recycle more everyone. It creates and maintains a significant level of jobs in the state. At the same time it saves energy and natural resources as well as reduces greenhouse gas omissions. The materials are cycle back into the economic mainstream as manufacturing feedstock replacing virgin materials.

Comment by Anon Thursday, Jul 2, 15 @ 12:40 pm
From someone who knows a little about trying to build a landfill from scratch, it can take 10 years. But the IEPA capacity report really does not accurately project landfill life. There really is a rolling 20 years at anyone given year based on flows of waste in and out of the state and incremental increase in capacity through operating efficiency.

Comment by BB Thursday, Jul 2, 15 @ 12:40 pm
The Clinton Landfill (DeWitt County is planning to start hauling in fly ash (coal ash).

Background on coal ash:

http://www.epa.gov/radiation/tenorm/coalandcoalash.html

Area Disposals plans:

News-Gazette http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2015-04-24/dewitt-board-clinton-landfill-owners-reach-deal-barring-pcbs.html :

“Meginnes said the landfill company had spent “millions” designing and building an elaborate “cell” to accept hazardous wastes. It now will be used for common municipal waste and for a new product — fly ash from coal-fired power plants.

“The U.S. EPA came out with some new regulations … that they’re going to put some new restrictions on utilities companies to clean it up,” he said. “We’re hoping we can get some of that waste.”

Meginnes said the fly ash is not considered hazardous waste.”

From the WATCH Clinton Landfill site(great people doing great work making sure a local government is transparent). Fly ash would be coming in by the railcar load. :

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8aR5SVQsJl4RGdGbTh0bEtqOG1XeUdRUXF5Rno4N2ZldnNZ/view?pli=1

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8aR5SVQsJl4ZFJvOURldlgtbUFVXzVXcmJaNjFfdTdIa18w/view?pli=1

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8aR5SVQsJl4TGU2RXV2bDA5NW8zTU95dkR0ZW9WSzhpbUZj/view?pli=1

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8aR5SVQsJl4alJqYzdJcTRsUy12d0c3NlhuNzJVaVFkbUJF/view?pli=1

You may be aware of the CLI- it was going to store PCBs. A multi-year. multi-jurisdictional area fight.

Comment by Anon221 Thursday, Jul 2, 15 @ 12:42 pm
It’s simple. Wait until their is little capacity remaining, claim that there is a emergency and blame it on the state employees.

Comment by dupage dan Thursday, Jul 2, 15 @ 12:50 pm
there, not their

Comment by dupage dan Thursday, Jul 2, 15 @ 12:50 pm
“The problem is, no one wants to think about the solution.”

One interesting solution that you see batted around environmental ethics books is to allocate landfills by sales-tax-eligible per capita purchasing by zip code or census tract, and put landfills where the most purchasing occurs … so poor folks in inner-city Rockford who consume little would not have a landfill, while Lake Forest would be at the top of the list. The idea is to allocate the consequences of consumer waste to those who do the most consumer wasting, instead of allowing them to externalize costs. Theoretically it reduces consumption by the rich and reduces housing inequality by making very wealthy areas less desirable and increasing the desirability of poor ones.

Practically it’ll never come off the pages of textbooks, so who knows what it would do in the real world!

Comment by Educated in the Suburbs Thursday, Jul 2, 15 @ 12:51 pm
@the Patriot: How is the EPA systematically shutting down landfills or making it impossible for landfills to operate? Please provide examples.

Comment by Tibicen Thursday, Jul 2, 15 @ 12:52 pm
We can do what they do in “green” Germany - send all our recyclables to Poland and pay for storing it there.

Comment by VanillaMan Thursday, Jul 2, 15 @ 12:54 pm
==based on 2014 disposal rates==

Population growth could leave less than 21 years, assuming we grow. /s

Comment by Formerly Known As... Thursday, Jul 2, 15 @ 12:55 pm
I heard Illinois gets a lot of garbage from NYC, New Jersey and other eastern cities. Trucks that deliver non-food products from the Midwest to the east coast often return empty. Rather then run at a loss, they haul bailed garbage back here. This is something that may cause our landfills to fill up much sooner then estimated.

Comment by DuPage Thursday, Jul 2, 15 @ 12:59 pm
When we first moved to southeast DuPage County, they floated the idea of an incinerator near Argonne to burn all garbage from DuPage. It didn’t fly. I think ours go to an landfill in Kendall, but not positive.

Comment by Bogey Golfer Thursday, Jul 2, 15 @ 1:14 pm
===send all our recyclables to Poland===

But Indiana is so much closer…and more deserving of our garbage.

Comment by 47th Ward Thursday, Jul 2, 15 @ 1:14 pm
The incinerator plan was 1987-88.

Comment by Bogey Golfer Thursday, Jul 2, 15 @ 1:15 pm
@Anon 12:40 =Recycle more everyone.=

Sounds good in theory. In actual practice, not so much. Bigger blue-bin recycling turning into loss-loss.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/american-recycling-is-stalling-and-the-big-blue-bin-is-one-reason-why/2015/06/20/914735e4-1610-11e5-9ddc-e3353542100c_story.html

Comment by DuPage Thursday, Jul 2, 15 @ 1:20 pm
===But Indiana is so much closer===

Agreed.

Comment by Rich Miller Thursday, Jul 2, 15 @ 1:22 pm
duPage: i’ve seen the article. That deals with single stream recycling versus dual stream recycling. Education as a great deal to do with the success of any program.

Comment by Anon Thursday, Jul 2, 15 @ 1:26 pm
as a recycling fanatic for many, many years, I know that it diverts from the landfill, but there are musing as to whether it’s being done the correct way…mixing devalues materials….and it’s not making much if any money. plans to require recycling would work in some areas and probably not in others. fly dumping is a worry.

but there is certainly more we can do, and one approach involves composting. teaching how to do that and providing sites to dump that waste if one cannot/does not want to do it at home is key. we have to do more. In Japan there are block monitors that spy on neighbors to make sure that even, for example, a lipstick tube is pulled apart, metal to recycling, before it is tossed. talk about a landfill shortage!

Comment by Amalia Thursday, Jul 2, 15 @ 1:41 pm
I recycle one 90 gallon container a week - same or more than non-recyclable stuff. Waste Management (with restrictions) lets you toss all recyclables together, which made all the difference

Comment by Anonymous Thursday, Jul 2, 15 @ 1:50 pm
Can landfills be diminished or impaired?

Comment by nixit71 Thursday, Jul 2, 15 @ 2:10 pm
This stinks! But it is a perfect use case for that new service tax Rauner wanted…

Comment by thechampaignlife Thursday, Jul 2, 15 @ 2:53 pm
Does this expected capacity account for the mass exodus of population to Indiana?

Comment by Pete Thursday, Jul 2, 15 @ 3:48 pm
“Meanwhile, the population exploded, and intelligence continued to decline until humanity was incapable of solving even it’s most basic problems. Like garbage…” - Idiocracy (the Movie)

Comment by WAK Thursday, Jul 2, 15 @ 3:58 pm