Due to the regulatory requirements that solid waste landfills in the US have liners, leachate collection systems, and groundwater and gas monitoring, USEPA has confidence that leachate and gas condensate recirculation can be allowed without adverse impacts to the environment. WM has over 60 landfills that practice leachate recirculation using several different methods. WM has recognized that most sites do not have enough leachate to rapidly stabilze or degrade waste in an optimum manner as would be allowed with operating fully as a bioreactor. A bioreactor landfill is one where sufficient liquids (leachates, condensates, clean water, and/or aqueous liquid wastes) allows the operator to increase the moisture content in MSW more rapidly to field capacity. Then the resultant leachate is recirculated to increase degradation rates. This paper will review the measured benefits of the biroeactor landfill as referenced from the literature, publically owned bioreactor demonstration projects, and WMs own full scale leachate recirculation and biroeactor landfills.
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