CLOSED LANDFILL SITES – MANAGING THE INFORMATION LEGACY

摘要

By successfully diverting waste to recycling or energy recovery facilities the European Landfill Directive has reduced the number of active landfills in various countries across Europe. Landfill sites that have closed will however require continued management until they are no longer a threat to the environment. Sites that accepted biodegradable materials such as household, commercial and industrial wastes are likely to require management over a period potentially extending into centuries or even millennia without accelerated stabilisation. All closed landfill sites that have to be actively managed for extended periods will pass as a legacy to successive future generations. If our successors are to continue to protect the environment from this legacy, and at the lowest cost and greatest efficiency, it is incumbent upon those professionals working in waste management today to protect archives and record their knowledge of the sites with which they have been involved. Management organisations therefore need to put in place systems that will enable secure long term storage of this information and provide for the continued accrual of new information as it is acquired. This will include all relevant documents and the existing and on-going monitoring data. Good management of data converts what would otherwise be a financial liability into a valuable long term asset. Information exists in a range of formats including paper, microfilm and microfiche as well as electronic documents and files. Electronic files will in turn contain information from a range of software and potentially in different formats relating to their age. All of this information may be actively managed in well run filings systems in some organisations but others are likely to have archived files to document stores or even lost them entirely. It is difficult to predict how much of the information will be required for site management and permit surrender in the future but it is necessary to consider now what should be preserved before too much is lost or destroyed. In an ideal world an organisation would be assigned to act as a repository for closed landfill data. This could be an appointed government agency in each country or a European body. A national or European solution will not be available any time soon, but until it is, all organisations with landfill management responsibility should be taking steps to collate and protect their information. Considerations required for information management will be presented here along with the strategy adopted by CEMEX UK Operations Ltd. using existing database technology from the EarthSoft Inc. EQuISTM suite of software as an example approach.