Natural Covers for Landfills and Buried Waste

Remediation of landfill wastes, mine land wastes, and oil shale residues normally includes a cover over the waste. Nearly all currently used landfill covers (caps) employ barrier-type systems. The authors discuss innovative vegetative landfill covers that use no barriers. They consist of a layer of soil covered by native grasses to control infiltrating precipitation as follows: (1) the soil stores infiltrating water; and (2) natural evapotranspiration empties the soil water reservoir. The vegetative cover concept has been extensively verified in the field. Because they are natural, they should perform better than conventional covers over decades or centuries and they are less expensive to build and maintain. The concept has been proven and it should be widely used. The authors propose that the name evapotranspiration cover should be associated with correctly designed and constructed vegetative covers.