Indian River works with Heartland Water to address leachate

In Florida, the Indian River County Solid Waste Disposal District’s facility (SWDD) has secured a long-term, on-site solution with known costs for managing its growing volume of landfill leachate.

The county’s strategic service partner, Heartland Water Technology, will furnish, install and operate a leachate treatment facility using the Hudson, Massachusetts, company’s Heartland Concentrator. The plant has commenced construction and will begin service early next year.

The SWDD generates approximately 25,000 gallons per day of landfill leachate. As the landfill grows, this volume is expected to increase. The SWDD sends leachate to the county’s utility wastewater treatment facility and has started trucking concentrated leachate to an off-site disposal plant across the state at considerable expense. In addition to adding more vehicles to the road, off-site disposal is fraught with uncertainty, as disposal outlets cut off leachate at an accelerating rate. Once cut off from a primary disposal solution, the cost of managing leachate can substantially increase.

Uneasy with off-site disposal of landfill leachate, the Indian River County Board of Commissioners, through its leadership at the SWDD, sought a long-term solution that would eliminate off-site disposal of leachate, lock in a long-term solution with known costs and improve its community and environmental stewardship.

After a rigorous selection process conducted through a third-party expert evaluation of several alternate disposal treatments, the SWDD selected Heartland Water Technology’s on-site evaporation solution.

The SWDD’s decision was based on Heartland’s complete leachate management service offering, its proven track record with on-site leachate treatment and a successful on-site pilot project, validated by the SWDD’s engineering consulting expert, Geosyntec.

“The county’s leadership team showed great vision with this project,” Heartland Water Technology CEO Earl Jones says. “Bettering the community and environment, treating the leachate on-site and locking in solution costs for the county for years to come—this is good government.”

On-site treatment also delivers operational and economic benefits for the county.

“Leachate management is a major challenge for every landfill,” Indian River County Board of Commissioners Managing Director Himanshu Mehta says. “Our leachate management solution takes away this challenge for the county, allowing [it to] focus on what we do best, which is the safe, professional management of disposal operations.”