Brookings Landfill Professional Services

Background

The Houston Engineering, Inc. (HEI) team of in-house hydrogeologists provide support for the Brookings Landfill and their solid waste permit. HEI’s team assisted in the preparation of the Sampling and Analysis Plan, which was developed to provide appropriate groundwater and soil vapor monitoring and analysis to maintain regulatory compliance with the facility’s permit.

The Project

Compliance Monitoring

HEI provides routine quarterly groundwater and methane monitoring for the facility.

Explosive vapors are generated by the waste as a natural byproduct of the degradation processes.

Methane vapor monitoring is performed at all well locations, buildings, and subsurface structures to provide assurance that explosive vapors are not present. HEI provides groundwater monitoring at the
permit-specified groundwater monitoring wells to provide information on groundwater characteristics and changes over time that may suggest the presence of leachate.

HEI staff perform Resource Conservation and Recovery Act-specified statistical analyses of the current and historical groundwater analytical data to identify potential statistically significant changes in parameter concentrations that may result from leachate impacts to groundwater.

HEI’s evaluation includes a collective geochemical evaluation of key groundwater indicator parameters for systemic evaluation of the groundwater environment.

Non-Methane Organic Compound Tier 2 Monitoring

Non-methane organic compound (NMOC) Tier 2 monitoring is required by the Clean Air Act to assess air emissions. In accordance with regulatory methodology, HEI personnel sampled 30 locations across the landfill cap, collecting and analyzing landfill gases for NMOC components. HEI’s analysis indicates that the emissions from the landfill successfully meet regulatory compliance thresholds.