Natural Covers for Landfills and Buried Waste
Publication: Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 127, Issue 9
Abstract
Remediation of landfill wastes, mine land wastes, and oil shale residues normally includes a cover over the waste. Nearly all currently used landfill covers (caps) employ barrier-type systems. The authors discuss innovative vegetative landfill covers that use no barriers. They consist of a layer of soil covered by native grasses to control infiltrating precipitation as follows: (1) the soil stores infiltrating water; and (2) natural evapotranspiration empties the soil water reservoir. The vegetative cover concept has been extensively verified in the field. Because they are natural, they should perform better than conventional covers over decades or centuries and they are less expensive to build and maintain. The concept has been proven and it should be widely used. The authors propose that the name evapotranspiration cover should be associated with correctly designed and constructed vegetative covers.
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Information & Authors
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Published In
Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 127 • Issue 9 • September 2001
Pages: 768 - 775
History
Received: Apr 19, 2000
Published online: Sep 1, 2001
Published in print: Sep 2001
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