Well,
jregieng hinted at it. VTEnviro pretty much nailed it. Fudgepump needs to eat more fiber, I think.
The only answers were the ones that were obvious from the pictures. You could even use your ENVRM to find the answers. In short, the answers cover the primary operating requirements for a landfill: daily cover, lift construction, and runoff/leachate management.
In the first picture, there are two big problems:
1. Notice that ridiculous little "tarp" out in the middle of the waste pile in the foreground? That's the "alternative daily cover" that we approved a couple years back, to help conserve airspace. Back when the landfill was being managed properly by an experienced contractor, the working face was small enough to be covered by that one section of tarpaulin. Now that the contractor has been run off and our Public Works is running the joint, the situation has come to this. I literally laughed out loud when I saw this. They've got to be kidding. Right? Ugghh.
2. Notice the large area of uncovered trash all over the place. But it goes beyond the daily cover requirement. Check out the lift construction. Basically, there is no organized lift construction. The pile in the foreground is just that - a pile, spread all around horizontally. The "lift" in the background is a little better, but hardly. Not really a permit requirement, but just bad practice. These guys should know better - we've had George Savage himself out here several times to train them.
3. Bonus point: a) look at all the holes and tears in the alternative cover. Not very effective at meeting the vector or odor control requirements. But that may be hard to tell at the reduced scale.
In the second picture, the "lake" at the bottom illustrates another big problem:
4. Under previous management, the landfill was operated such that the lake in the picture was composed only of clean runoff from the unused cell 2. It could just be pumped into the unlined cell 3 for disposal (good perc rate). Now, however, the poor lift construction in cell 1 has directed all runoff from cell 1 into cell 2, which includes a number of surface leachate seeps. So that water is now leachate. Diluted leachate, to be sure, but leachate nonetheless. Which means that the other main landfill design/operating parameter of maintaining a depth of leachate no greater than 30 cm above the liner is not being met. (the HDPE liner is about 4 feet below the aggregate layer shown, which is maybe another 2 feet below the surface of the lake). And, even worse, the leachate pumps for cell 2 have been canibalized to fix the cell 1 pumps, so there is no way to fix the problem until another pump can be obtained, but you can't see that in the picture, so nevermind.
Good calls on all the other guesses, but if you can't see it from the picture, it doesn't count. But you're pretty much right. Anything that can be wrong IS wrong right now. I could go on and on, but I've got to run off for a meeting. :brick:
Edit - I just noticed that two of you asked where the vents are. There are none. The landfill opened up in 2003, and until now, I hdan't really thought about it. We had an experienced contractor running it for a while, and he said we wouldn't need to worry about it for a few more years. But he's been booted out now, so maybe I'd better start worrying about that now. Thanks for the heads up.