A flow failure in a municipal solid waste landfill – the failure at Bulbul, South Africa
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Published:2004
G. E. Blight, 2004. "A flow failure in a municipal solid waste landfill – the failure at Bulbul, South Africa", Advances in geotechnical engineering: The Skempton conference: Proceedings of a three day conference on advances in geotechnical engineering, organised by the Institution of Civil Engineers and held at the Royal Geographical Society, London, UK, on 29–31 March 2004
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It is not widely known that municipal solid waste can, under certain circumstances, lose strength, liquefy and flow considerable distances. Flow failures of municipal solid waste landfills have previously been reported from Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, Istanbul, Turkey and Bogota, Colombia. Flow failures of this type can be extremely dangerous to life; that in Istanbul, for example, killed 39 people. This paper will describe the events that led to a flow failure in a municipal solid waste landfill in Durban, South Africa. This is a shameful tale of a client who ignored the design of his consulting engineer and a regulatory authority that ignored or did not understand its own regulations. The fortunate outcome of this failure was that no-one was killed or injured and that the waste flowed onto an area that had been lined to receive an extension of the landfill. Thus environmental damage, purely by chance, was negligible.
Introduction
Design
Operation of the landfill
Relaxation of the co-disposal ratio
The potential for municipal solid waste to liquefy
Summary and conclusions
References
