HAZARDOUS MATERIAL LOADING TO MUNICIPAL LANDFILLS IN RESOURCE-BASED COMMUNITIES

Landfills in rural, resource-based communities are receiving unknown q uantities of potentially hazardous materials, including household haza rdous wastes (HHHW) and industrial, commercial, and institutional (ICI ) wastes in self-hauled and collection vehicle loads. Rural generation and disposal rates are expected to be higher than in urban areas. The research program was conducted in a resource-based community consisti ng of a town of about 5500 residents and the surrounding rural area wi th an equal number of residents in Alberta. The research objective was to determine the weight fraction of hazardous materials in the refuse through physical sampling of the waste stream at the community landfi ll. Over a 1-year period (1991), large collection vehicle loads and se lf-hauled private and ICI loads from the town and the rural area were sampled during 1 week in each season using a two-staged systematic ran dom sampling design to measure the average weight fraction and variati on by season and by type of load. The results show the annual average weight fraction of hazardous materials to be 6.7% with a 95% confidenc e interval of 4.0% to 9.4%. Seasonal differences are apparent, but are not significant. Self-hauled ICI and rural wastes tend to contain hig her percentages of potentially hazardous materials, but the variation is also higher so the values are not significantly different from thos e from the town. The detected materials consist mainly of oily wastes (debris, oil containers, and vehicle oil filters), other automotive pr oducts, and paints. As a result, the hazardous material content of rur al community refuse appears to be substantially higher than the 0.3% t o 1.0% reported for HHHW in urban refuse streams. While the rural comp osition suggests that vehicle and home maintenance contribute some of the difference, this study also shows that ICI wastes and self-hauled loads contribute noticeable quantities of potentially hazardous materi als. The results suggest that it is essential for rural communities to consider waste management alternatives for potentially hazardous mate rials because rural waste streams contain significantly higher percent ages and because rural landfills are often not designed to as high a s tandard as large urban facilities.