LAND TREATMENT OF WASTE
AS AN INDUSTRIAL SITING ADVANTAGE
Glenn L. Taylor, Land Treatment Specialist
Larry A. Neal, Senior Environmental Engineer
Law Engineering Testing Company
Marietta, Georgia 30067
Historically, industrial siting of new production facilities has relied on the availability
of utilities, water and waste treatment. Industry has often relied on municipalities adjacent
to the sites to provide these services. Most municipalities, particularly if they are actively
seeking industrial development, have adequate utilities and water supply. However, most
municipalities are not prepared to treat industrial wastes. Industrial siting has, therefore,
been limited to sites within pumping distance of an adequate waste treatment facility,
or a river capable of assimilating the waste output from an onsite system.
Land treatment of industrial wastes offers an alternative. Land treatment is the use of a
vegetation-soil system to both renovate the waste and to serve as the ultimate receiver of
the waste. Potential industrial sites are no longer limited to areas with existing sewers or
access to a river for waste treatment.
ADVANTAGES OF LAND TREATMENT
With the trends in environmental solutions for industrial wastes, land treatment is rapidly
becoming a method of choice. The number of facilities which take advantage of the substantial economic and technical benefits of land treatment is increasing steadily to include
a very wide range of land price and availability, geographic, climatological, management
attitude, and regulatory acceptance situations. Having developed over 125 land treatment
systems, the authors have observed several common advantages. These are described below,
recognizing that at any given site, certain other advantages may also be present. Briefly, the
recurring benefits are (1) agricultural orientation, (2) low investment and operating costs,
(3) conservation of energy and (4) a zero discharge system.
The agricultural essence of land treatment is the application of waste to a plant-soil system so that the land remains productive and the waste is satisfactorily assimilated. This is
very similar to the operation of a crop production system. The monitoring and assimilation
criteria are largely related to the behavior of the soils and plants which is also agronomically
related. It should be noted that while these systems are agriculturally related, the agricultural
aspects are secondary to the goal of providing waste treatment and environmental protection.
The operation of land treatment can be accomplished using less formally trained personnel
than is required for the successful operation of advanced wastewater treatment facilities.
The principal advantage for real estate concerns is that if land treatment is feasible at a
site, the need for sewers has been eliminated. The need to be on a receiving stream to which
wastes can be discharged has also been eliminated. So, one of the most common site development constraining factors has suddenly been taken away.
Another major advantage is potential cost savings. In more than 125 evaluations of the
economics of land treatment of wastes, it is very often more cost-effective than the conventional treatment and discharge alternative. Sometimes the cost savings are tremendous. Some
of the more complex wastes that are hard to treat by traditional systems are very easily
treated by land treatment. In general, the more difficult it is to treat the waste by conventional technologies, the higher the potential for cost savings with land treatment. The
savings can range anywhere from 30 to 50% or higher for certain wastes.
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