Proactive odour and air quality management at a landfill on the US East Coast

A state environmental authority on the East Coast of the USA has been receiving an increasing number of odour complaints about a landfill in their jurisdiction. Residents of neighbouring communities had been reporting rotten egg, sulphur, and sewage-type odours. 

In an effort to stay proactive, the landfill has started sharing information with the community regarding actions taken by the environmental authority and nearby town in order to improve air quality in the areas surrounding the landfill.  Odour is still a challenge for operators today despite a wide range of abatement options. It’s critical to know the precise time to engage odour control measures or how external factors like the weather might determine future impact. 

Lack of knowledge of these areas can lead to impacts on nearby communities which creates costly investigations and disruptions from lawsuits and fines. This results in poor publicity for site operations in the media and a damaged reputation.

The landfill is now faced with the challenge of verifying the effectiveness of the correction action plan implemented at the landfill while remaining operationally efficient. The operations team have commenced a 2-year continuous odour (H2S) monitoring program. Devices have been installed at two offsite locations (one near the leachate tanks, and the other at a nearby school). 

It’s critical that the landfill maintain operational efficiency while the implemented monitoring program is undertaken while not exceeding thresholds or impacting the community. 

The operations team at the landfill have now signed on for Envirosuite software. When the landfill receives a complaint about odours or detects an odour in the area around the site during a routine odour investigation, the Envirosuite allows users to:

The image above shows Envirosuite software being used for odour monitoring at a landfill. 

These alerts lead to quicker notification and corrective action than a situation without real-time monitoring capability, where the odour event would continue to get worse until reported by someone in the neighboring community. The landfill can use Envirosuite software to:

The image above show's Envirosuite software being used to detect the source of odours in the community at a landfill. 

The landfill is now empowered with real-time data and IoT to gain situational awareness of their site and risks of critical odour issues before they become larger problems.

This is providing a better alternative to slow and expensive environmental investigations that lead to inconclusive results, while also allowing the team to increase the effectiveness of their odour control systems and optimise their operations with reliable environmental intelligence. 

The landfill is now able to manage complaints and keep operating without impacting the nearby community.