Indian River County celebrates leachate concentrator

The Indian River County (IRC) Solid Waste Disposal District Facility (SWDD) and Heartland Water Technology, Hudson, Massachusetts, hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony last week to celebrate the commissioning of a new, state-of-the-art wastewater treatment solution.

The SWDD and Heartland Water’s Indian River Sustainability Center are working in partnership to provide an economical, sustainable solution for landfill leachate. The Indian River Sustainability Center will use Heartland’s proprietary leachate concentrator to evaporate onsite up to 30,000 gallons per day of leachate. This onsite solution will use renewable energy generated at the landfill, lower costs for the county and its citizens and avoid up to 10 truck trips per day for disposal off-site.

In attendance to celebrate the opening was IRC Board of Commissioners Chairman Joe Earman.

“The Sustainability Center addresses an important challenge for the landfill and creates a new strategic capability for the long-term,” Earman says. “By treating leachate on-site, we control cost and avoid trucking leachate through the county, advancing both our economic and environmental goals. Through the Sustainability Center, we will continue to innovate by working with private industry and academia to improve landfill operations for the county and across the state.”

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All landfills generate leachate as rainwater percolates through the soil. All across the country, landfill operators are dealing with rising costs of off-site disposal. These rising costs can be significant and arise unexpectedly as off-site disposal options shrink. To safeguard the county against unexpected cost increases, secure a long-term solution option for its leachate, improve environmental metrics and lower current costs, the county commission and SWDD engaged in a robust technical and economic evaluation of solution options and selected Heartland Water as its solution provider. 

Himanshu Mehta, the managing director at IRC SWDD, led the evaluation and supervised the entire project.

“Heartland is a proven leader in the leachate treatment space,” he says. “By engaging Heartland’s leachate management service, we have a solution for the county’s leachate that both lowers cost and improves environmental outcomes.”

Also speaking at the ceremony was Heartland CEO Earl Jones says the county’s leadership team and commissioners “reflect the best in good government.”

 “Thoughtful and thorough, the county’s leadership team sought a life-of-the-landfill solution for its leachate,” he says. “The citizens of Indian River County should be very proud of their elected officials and civil servants.”