Subtitle D Vegetative Cap Alternative Used for California Landfill Closure Cover

The city of Portola Landfill in the Sierra Nevada Mountain town of Portola, Calif. completed its landfill closure that it’s city council reviewed of the approved final landfill closure system, ClosureTurf. The scope of work included: removing the interim cover, supply and install drainage improvements and supply/install a synthetic final cover system known as ClosureTurf developed by Watershed Geo. The city of Portola landfill was an unlined landfill with highly erosive soils on site causing long term maintenance issues and ground water contamination problems.

ClosureTurf is an engineered Subtitle D compliant system that is specifically designed to address and solve soil erosion failure and gas system failure, as well as promoting slope integrity and reducing gas emissions. It’s horizontal surficial gas system offers a far more efficient process of collecting gas emissions than the labor-intensive vertical system of pipes and wells that are employed by traditional landfill closure systems. ClosureTurf also ensures the longevity and durability of landfills from a structural standpoint, and is suitable for final landfill closures (full closures or incremental closures).

“Prior to ClosureTurf becoming available we had looked at the traditional Subtitle D vegetative cap however one of the biggest advantages of ClosureTurf is the avoidance of long term maintenance costs”, stated the city of Portola’s solid waste consultant, Tom Valentino P.E., president of the firm TGV Solid Waste Inc. “Another one of the advantages of going with the Closure Turf system was the ease of installation as we were under a tight time schedule to get the project completed.”

Through the process Watershed Geo provided the city council and public with an overview of the State of California approved Closure Turf system to complete the final closure of landfills. One of the items that came up at one of the City Council meetings was the cost of the ClosureTurf system. It was outlined that although the project cost is projected to be approximately the same cost as closure with a traditional Subtitle D method the future maintenance costs for the closure turf product will be significantly less.

“From a Construction Quality Assurance perspective, installation of a ClosureTurf cover system required less field personnel during construction than a traditional prescriptive cover system. This resulted in cost savings to the City”, ssaid Jake Russell P.E., Portola’s CQA consulting firm Geo-Logic Associates. “The installation of the ClosureTurf cover was completed in significantly less time than other similarly sized prescriptive Subtitle D vegetative cap landfill cover systems with which I have been involved. By removing the soil components of the cover system, construction issues associated with the variability and availability of soil materials were eliminated.”

Mike Ayers, CEO/president of Watershed Geo says, “ClosureTurf is performing as it was designed. Key issues that landfill owners, operators and engineers face regularly such as slope stability, groundwater contamination, long term maintenance and gas collection issues just aren’t optimized with a traditional Subtitle D vegetative cover system.”

Source: PRWeb