Integrated Solid Waste Management Planning

Delaware County, New York. As part of Delaware County’s goal to continue to utilise their existing landfill site, they embarked on extensive efforts to re-define their solid waste management goals and objectives. In order to do so, the County assembled a team of planning specialists who focused on centralised and integrated solid waste management and watershed planning issues.

As part of the overall strategy to fully utilise the existing landfill property, GHD successfully identified a solution to continue development of solid waste disposal and processing facilities at the County’s Solid Waste Management Center that satisfied environmental, regulatory, and watershed management standards. These efforts included: solid waste management planning; development of aggressive recycling and landfill diversion strategies; integration of multiple town transfer stations; biosolids management; wetlands evaluation; landfill siting study and permitting; landfill design and construction services; and municipal solid waste (MSW) co-composting facility development.

Components of the fully enclosed MSW co-composting facility include:

• A waste recovery area for MSW, biosolids, and liquid waste
• A design capacity of 35,000 tons per year (TPY) for MSW and 6500 tons per year for biosolids
• A 48m rotating drum bioreactor
• Primary refining and sorting area
• Maturation area for 56 days of compost processing
• Fully enclosed secondary refining system to remove inorganic matter
• Compost storage and curing area for 90 days of compost
• Biofilter and complete odor control system

The Solid Waste Management Center is now home to a state-of-the-art solid waste landfill, a materials recovery facility, a construction and demolition landfill, and a municipal solid waste co-composting facility.