DuPage County, IL
In 2023, scientists from around the world gathered in DuPage county, IL, to tour a closed landfill at Mallard Lake.
Just 10 years ago, the USPA and IEPA recorded seepage of leachate from the perimeters of the landfill into surrounding water systems and requested DuPage Forest District take immediate action to stop the contamination. Leachate is a contaminated by-product of any water that passes through a solid waste disposal site causing contaminants to accumulate and move to subsurface areas. There is a danger of leachate contaminating subsurface and surface water if there is now confining barrier beneath or around the waste disposal site.
Today members of the International Phytotechnology Society had the opportunity to learn more about how the Forest Preserve District utilized plants to handle the leachate that was building up at the landfill.
Normally, leachate is collected in tanks to taken to a water-treatment facility, but in DuPage county, 8,500 poplar and willow trees on 14.7 acres have absorbed the contaminated liquid, used the compounds for enrichment, and released the clean water back into the environment via evapotranspiration.
From the DuPage County’s Forest Preserve District’s website:
“Since the phyto-utilization system became operational in 2018, it has treated over 20 million gallons of leachate and subsequently reduced leachate disposal costs for the District by $700,000,” said Brock Lovelace, manager of engineering & environmental services for the Forest Preserve District. “As the system cost $919,000 to install, we anticipate a return on investment within a couple of years while still having decades of operational life remaining on the system,” he said.
Sources:
https://response.epa.gov/site/site_profile.aspx?site_id=5046
https://www.dupageforest.org/what-we-do/news/news-releases/mallard-lake-landfill-tour