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12.2 Landfill sites

Search for Landfill and Landraise sites

12.31 Despite the fact that the Waste DPD intends to adopt a Resource Recovery-led strategy, there will always be a requirement for some residual landfill.  Therefore, it is important that Merseyside and Halton attempt to identify some suitable sites, so that the sub-region is not completely reliant on neighbouring areas for landfill disposal.

12.32 The landfill sites which have current authorisations within Merseyside and Halton are shown in Table 12.6.  It should be noted that landfill sites maintain their authorisations for many years after the landfilling operations are complete.  This is to allow for restoration and aftercare of the site in terms of landfill gas and leachate monitoring and management.  The table also indicates the status of the site in terms of whether it is still operational or undergoing restoration and aftercare. It should be noted that of the sites listed in table 12.6 the only site still accepting waste is Lyme and Wood Pits (shown highlighted in table). The remaining sites within table 12.6 are either closed, under restoration or historic landfills, which are still authorised Environment Agency landfill sites (for reasons of monitoring and aftercare) but are no longer operational.

12.33 The locational requirements for landfill sites vary from other waste management facilities in that:

• A void space is required below the surrounding ground levels - this typically means that landfills are usually located in former quarries and minerals workings
• Former minerals sites are often located in Green Belt or outside of existing industrial areas
• Geology and groundwater issues are of critical importance as many landfill voids are close to or below groundwater levels
• The scale of the facilities and the scarcity of suitable sites means that landfill often receives waste from a wider geographical area (rather than just a county or sub-region) and are therefore, of sub-regional or even regional significance
• Landfill disposal is at the bottom of the waste hierarchy and the disposal option is of last resort

12.34 It is for these reasons that new landfill sites are strictly regulated by the Environment Agency in order to deliver a very high degree of environmental protection.

12.35 Across Merseyside and Halton, the opportunities for new landfill are very limited because of a combination of planning and environmental constraints including:

• The underlying geology and hyrdrogeology is extremely sensitive to pollution risks, especially those arising from landfill of waste to groundwater resources including water abstractions and source protection zones
• Most former quarries and minerals workings have already been used, reclaimed, developed or restored
• There are limited opportunities for new minerals workings in the sub-region, which would then be suitable for landfill in the future
• There are very few operational minerals sites in Merseyside & Halton
• Much of Merseyside and Halton is densely developed for housing, commerce and industry

12.36 Nevertheless, the Waste DPD Needs Assessment has clearly identified that Merseyside and Halton will need significant new landfill capacity early in the Plan period (to 2015) and until the new treatment facilities needed to deliver the Resource Recovery-led Strategy are built.

12.37 Given that the potential for new landfill sites is extremely limited, it will also be necessary to examine landraise potential.  Generally, landraise has similar constraint issues and engineering challenges to landfill but vary in several respects, namely:

• Landraise is less tied to the location of available void space
• There are still hydrogeological and groundwater issues, but landraise is likely to be further removed from the groundwater levels
• It has very substantial landscape impact issues which are a major concern in a generally low lying, urbanised metropolitan area, such as Merseyside and Halton

12.38 It is on this basis that a search for sites with any potential for use as landfill or landraise was also undertaken in-house by Merseyside EAS officers.

12.39 Any search for landfill sites is by its very nature somewhat different from a search for other waste management facilities. Landfill can only take place where there is a "hole in the ground" from some form of extractive activity. Landraise is possible in principle on many types of land but is practically likely to be restricted to over-filling of existing landfill sites. These sites are not generally in existing industrial estates but are often out in the countryside or on the fringes of urban and industrial areas. There are therefore planning considerable constraints such as Green Belt and other conservation designations which hamper proposals for landfill development.

12.40 The input data for the Site Survey for Landfill / Landraise which contributed to the list of potential sites (see Appendix D) was derived from various relevant sources, namely;

• Environment Agency Authorised Current Landfill data
• Environment Agency Historic Landfill data
• MWDA closed landfills data
• Mineral Planning Applications
• Sites brought forward by Industry
• In-house knowledge
• 1:10,000 scale Ordnance Survey maps desktop search

12.41 All of these datasets were consolidated into a Geographic Information System to form a single complete spatial dataset. All sites within the dataset with an area <0.5 hectares were then removed and obvious duplications were also withdrawn. This resulting dataset comprised of approximately 450 potential sites.

12.42 This dataset was then subject to a multi-criteria screening and scoring similar to the process applied to the general waste management site dataset (see Section 11). The criteria which included all those used for the general waste management site screening with the exception of industrial estates, Green Belt, bus stops, railway stations and unemployment areas because these are not primary considerations for landfill. The only other change to the scoring system was an alteration to the Prime Agricultural Land Classification score from -15 to -5.  This is because landfill sites can be restored to agricultural use and topsoil can be removed and stored for re-use during restoration.

12.43 The range of scores from the screening of the potential landfill / landraise sites was from -4 to -201. Further detailed examination of the list, filtering out of duplicates and sites which were obviously undeliverable, reduced the number of possible allocations within the potential landfill list from 450 to 104 (October 2008).  Appendix D shows the top 30% of the best scoring sites. The full list of 104 sites is available on the website www.wasteplanningmerseyside.gov.uk.

12.44 The list of potential landfill sites is still to go through a technical assessment process similar to that described in Stage 3 (Detailed examination of top-scoring sties and on-site assessment visits) in Section 11 of this report.  The technical assessment will include detailed discussions with the Environment Agency to identify key environmental protection constraints particularly those relating to groundwater protection, identification of landowners where possible by reference to the Land Registry and District Councils and also liaison with individual District planning departments to ascertain planning constraints and additional deliverability issues.

12.45 The final outcome of the search for suitable future landfill will be consulted upon at the next stage of the Waste DPD process.  However, it should be noted that the sites currently under investigation are constrained by numerous factors and therefore, the final shortlist is likely to be limited to a handful of sites with substantial constraints.