LRegulation of non listed enterprises
The EC is currently debating a landfill Directive, and it is expected to be adopted within the next few years. The Directive is expected to stipulate detailed requirements relating to the construction, location and operation of landfills. Among other things there will be detailed rules concerning the operator’s duties and responsibilities.
In Denmark the location of landfills is in the first instance a question that is decided in accordance with town and country planning legislation. In the interest of protecting the environment - in practice the groundwater - it may subsequently prove necessary to drop a planned landfill.
The Danish line with regard to landfills is as follows:
When situating landfills, two factors are decisive: The first is that landfills are no longer wanted in the coastal zone, the latter being defined by law in most parts of the country as a 3 km wide belt along the coast. In the coastal zones, nature protection has first priority. The second factor, however, is that one wants the landfills to be as near the coast as possible - i.e. just inland of the 3 km coastal zone - and in an area where the groundwater flows towards the sea. The reason for this is to ensure as little damage to the drinking water resources as possible should the landfill membrane puncture.
LRegulation of non listed enterprises
The landfills have to be approved as listed enterprises. They are subject to a number of requirements, primarily aimed at protecting the groundwater. Each landfill has to be equipped with a membrane comprised of a dense layer of clay or heavy-duty plastic. A drainage system has to be laid over the membrane to collect the percolate (rainwater that leaches down through the waste), and the percolate has to be led to a municipal sewage treatment plant. A general requirement is that the landfill is large (over 700,000 m3) so that it can be manned and operated for a number of years. It is therefore also usual practice that the Municipalities form jointly owned waste disposal enterprises, often with a population base of 100-200,000 inhabitants.
Because of the technical and manning requirements to landfills the price for depositing waste has increased considerably in recent years, and is now typically DKK 200-250 per tonne. This price is cost-related in accordance with the principle of economic neutrality (see Section 12.1). On top of this there is the waste levy of DKK 195 per tonne, giving a total price of at least DKK 400 per tonne.
Since 1992, all landfills have to be publicly owned. The reason is that problems with landfills can arise even many years after they have closed, problems which can be expensive to remedy. Enterprises can still obtain permission to establish their own landfills for special purposes, however.
Waste chemicals and oils can only be deposited at special depositories. The requirements to these are more stringent than for ordinary landfills, depending of course on the type of waste. The largest special depository is that run by the waste processing firm Kommunekemi A/S at Klintholm on the east coast of Funen. The waste deposited here includes slag from waste incineration at Kommunekemi and waste that cannot be processed by the incineration plant.
Progress as regards regulation of landfills is difficult to assess. In
principle it is a question of whether landfills established after 1974 have less impact on
the groundwater than the old landfills established before 1974. An analysis would probably
confirm this. However, it must also be admitted that the membranes that are used to line
modern landfills do not always last the whole lifetime of a landfill (the deposition
period plus the 30-40 years, that decomposition of the waste can take).
