How to address difficulties in acquiring land for landfill operations?

Acquiring land suitable for urban landfills (such as transfer stations/zones, landfills, incinerators and/or composting plants) can be difficult, not only because of the special site requirements, which are related to geological stability, capacity, soil conditions, etc., but also due to “Not in My Backyard” (NIMBY) effects. 

NIMBY refers to sites commonly opposed to by people living in the immediate area of the proposed site and along the route that the waste transport trucks are expected to use.

Even well-managed landfills may produce odors and disease vectors, which lower the value of neighboring property and reinforce NIMBY effects. 

Poorly managed sites (and open dumps) pose additional health and environmental risks due to toxins leaching into the soil and water, and generation of hazardous gases. As a result, resistance to siting landfills near existing development is often intense. 

The result of this is lengthy travel times to landfills, increasing financial and energy costs and, once the distance exceeds certain limits, the need for transfer stations. Similarly, it is often difficult to acquire land for co-generation, recycling, composting, etc.

Hence, there are good practices which can be taken to understand  and implement to address the difficulties and problems.

1. Planning the location of solid waste treatment facilities based on regional environmental characteristics, including hydrology, geology, topography and predominant winds, as well as on functional considerations, such as volume, catchment areas and travel times. An important consideration in metropolitan areas is the possibility of sharing facilities among several municipalities, rather than each one building its own facility.
2. Including all stakeholders in land siting and design processes: Providing commitments to employing monitoring and community liaison staff from the community, and giving priority to local residents for new jobs created by the site, can help win site approval. Most cities also offer free unloading of wastes to the host community and/or a share of revenues obtained from tipping fees paid by users. Site designs that provide vegetative buffer zones, curved internal access roads that limit sight lines into the facility, and environmental mitigation measures that minimize emissions may further be included to secure public consensus.
3. Allowing temporary uses of vacant land for landfill operations: Dumping on vacant land should be strictly forbidden. However, allowing temporary uses of vacant land for landfill operations, such as composting, recycling or urban gardens, is an effective means to prevent unwanted/informal dumping in vacant lands. Proper pollution control measures should be adopted to avoid negative environmental impacts. After temporary uses, these lands could be redeveloped for other economic uses through certain cleanup and recycling techniques.
4. Encouraging community-based initiatives: Community participation in solid waste collection, siting and design of recycling, composting and co-generation facilities is inherently essential to sustainable solid waste management. Cities could create incentives for communities to undertake these function through providing public land and other innovative programs.
5. Allowing for on-site facilities: As waste is increasingly being seen as a new valuable resource and a symbol of green ethics, on-site facilities and yard space for domestic and industrial waste processing, such as composting and construction material recycling, should be encouraged,18 as should eco-industrial parks, where the waste of one industry is used as an input into another. Land use planning should allow for these activities, including landfill areas, which need to be larger than in the past to allow for co-generation facilities, methane gas capture and use, composting, recycling, etc.

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