Landfill in Georgia – Access on a landfill site can quickly become a challenge for operators and the necessity to build long-lasting roadways on the waste capable of taking the loads of daily truck traffic without deforming from the wastes’ settling. BLE was presented with the opportunity to design such a haul road for a landfill in Georgia.

The access road was expected to receive hundreds of large transfer trucks a week bringing waste to the landfill for up to 5 years so constant and repeated loading of the roadway embankment and underlying waste was a given. Portions of the waste that the roadway was to be built on were at a relatively steep, 3:1 horizontal to vertical slope. Other sections of the road would have to be built on top of closure geosynthetics covering the waste, which pose challenges concerning the interface friction against the embankment soils and the wastes. Landfill gas would need to be contended with as uplift below the geosynthetics could cause the roadway to move. Since the roadway was being built on top of geosynthetics, drainage would be needed within the base of the embankment to prevent water from becoming trapped within the roadway fill.

This project was the perfect opportunity for the BLE team to bring our expertise and knowledge in waste and embankment fills, geosynthetics, interface friction, landfill gas systems, drainage systems, and slope stability modeling together to provide our client with the ideal solution. The roadways were designed to withstand the effects of traffic, rain, and waste decomposition without breaking the client’s bank.