My Account
Trucks discharge their waste at Redvale. Even modern landfills don’t look pretty. Photo, Waste Management.
As the battle to oppose a landfill in the Dome Valley heads to the Environment Court, James Addis accepts an invitation from Waste Management to see their operation at Redvale, where they try to persuade him that a dump in the Dome will be just fine.
It was a tough call. Does one accept an invitation from Waste Management (WM) to see their landfill operation at the Redvale Landfill & Energy Park? Their motivation of course, is to assure you that modern landfills like Redvale, are very clean, green affairs. Hence, the fuss generated by the prospect of a similar landfill in the Dome Valley is entirely unfounded.
It’s a tricky decision whether to accept the invitation because WM has a lot of facts and figures about its landfill at its fingertips. That makes it tough for even the best prepared reporter to effectively challenge what they might say. Further red flags were raised when it emerged that no photographs would be allowed and any direct quotes from my host, general manager Ian Kennedy, would need to be shown to him before publication. An attempt to manipulate the message?
“I had a burning
question for Waste Management.”
But I decide to go. Partly because I had a burning question for WM, which goes something like this: “Let’s assume for the sake of argument your landfill is pretty green and clean, but let’s face it, landfills eventually fill up. Then you are faced with finding another landfill. Given that it took you nearly 10 years to find a suitable site to replace Redvale and the best you could come up with was a sensitive spot like the Dome, haven’t landfills had their day? Surely, we would be better off with a waste-to-energy plant which, assuming appropriate maintenance, could chug along more or less indefinitely. I’ll come to this burning question later.
When I turn up, I’m ushered into a seminar room and Ian guides me through a PowerPoint presentation on the virtues of modern-day landfills that goes on for nearly two hours. Two points stick in my mind. The first is that Redvale is built on low permeability mudstone that is about 70 metres thick. For this reason, Redvale is not deemed to need the sophisticated liner system that will need to be employed in the Dome to try to prevent leachate seeping into the waterways. The second is that rainfall levels at Redvale are lower than at the Dome, making stormwater management at Redvale easier. They are points that tend to underscore the fact that putting a landfill in the Dome is a riskier proposition and, therefore, comparisons with Redvale need to be made with some caution.
As it turns out, the composite liner that will be deployed at the Dome takes up a fair chunk of WM’s presentation. According to WM, its polyethylene liner has a life expectancy of between 450 years and 750 years (determined using “accelerated testing” techniques) and it’s placed on top of about 900mm of compacted clay, which has a life expectancy of millions of years. In short, WM are confident there will be no leachate breach through their liner.
That confidence extends to their stormwater management systems, their landfill gas treatment and monitoring, odour control and environmental protection systems, which they point out to me during my subsequent tour of the Redvale site.
I confess it sounded very convincing, which is unsurprising when you consider that four out of five commissioners at the resource consent hearings were willing to grant a consent for a landfill in the Dome after listening to much the same evidence. I’m not saying what WM says should be taken as gospel, but it underlines just what a challenge landfill opponents will have to overturn the decision of the commissioners in the Environment Court.
But what of my earlier point that landfills eventually fill up and you are then stuck with finding another one. Why not invest in waste-to-energy (WTE) plants instead? WM point out a few problems. The first is cost. Estimated cost for a WTE plant to deal with Auckland’s waste is about $1 billion and you must find this money upfront before you even open the door. Landfills, on the other hand, are cheaper and the cost of them is spread over time. Secondly, if you spend $1 billion on WTE, the pressure is on to feed them sufficient waste to justify the investment. Rather than incentivising waste reduction – something on which nearly everyone agrees is a good idea – you incentivise waste creation. Scandinavian countries which have installed WTE plants and have also successfully managed to reduce their waste volumes, now find themselves having to import plastic waste from the UK to feed their WTE plants and create the heat and electricity, which their economy demands. Lest anyone think this is a lot of WM moonshine, by pure coincidence Mahurangi Matters Science columnist Ralph Cooney, doing his own research, makes the same point in his column this week (see page 28).
This then is the challenge. If we don’t put a landfill in the Dome, what do we do with our waste? Redvale is due to close in 2028, just seven years away. The clock is ticking.
