Case Study: Piston Pumping Solutions - Slideslope

Why would anyone need to go to such great length to pump landfill leachate? Outside the burgeoning Sacramento metropolitan area, the terrain is so flat that the Placer County, Calif. mixed solid-waste landfill is the sum of 14 modular landfills, 6 out of the 14 have been filled up to 60 feet above grade and created by excavating 45 feet down into the land. As the need for more landfill space arises, new modules are created behind the first. The further out the hills go, the longer the distance in which the leachate from them must be pumped to a manhole discharge in order to keep the liquid at the government-mandated levels. This is no easy task considering that in the most challenging case to date at Placer County, the leachate is pumped to 45 feet from the bottom of a module to the surface and then an additional 4,000 feet to the manhole discharge and into the municipal wastewater treatment system at the desired rate of three to five gallons per minute. Of course, the leachate is constantly analyzed to ensure that it can be discharged safely into the municipal system.