The EU Landfill Directive (1999/31/EC) requires (in Article 13 c)) that “after a landfill has been definitely closed, the operator shall be responsible for its maintenance, monitoring and control in the after-care phase for as long as may be required by the competent authority, taking into account the time during which the landfill could present hazards.” In Article 10 of the Landfill Directive Member States are required to ensure that financial security is in place to include the cost of the after-care of a closed landfill site for a period of “at least 30 years”. Despite the formulation, it has become customary for many landfill operators e.g. in Denmark to use 30 years of after-care as a default condition when calculating the gate fees for acceptance of waste at a landfill. This means that if the aftercare period exceeds 30 years (which for many landfills seems likely), maintenance, monitoring and control is still the responsibility of the operator, but the financial security may be insufficient to cover the costs associated with the extension of the aftercare period. This problem could be anticipated and possibly remedied if a reasonably accurate estimate could be made of the aftercare period for a given landfill. However, in order to assess the duration of the aftercare period for a landfill, it is necessary to determine the conditions under which “the competent authorities [no longer] consider the landfill likely to cause a hazard to the environment” (Article 12 d) in the Landfill Directive). The Landfill Directive does not provide any specific guidance on how to determine that the landfill has reached a stage where the active management associated with the after-care period can be discontinued and the landfill can be “left on its own” with only passive environmental protection systems in place. Estimating the duration of the aftercare period for a landfill is at best an extremely difficult task, and if the goal to be reached is not known, it becomes virtually impossible. In general, the exact criteria to be met are likely to be site-specific and depend on the type of landfill in question and on vulnerability of the surrounding environment.
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