The impact of licensing on selected hazardous waste disposal facilities in South Africa

Abstract

This research evaluates the impact of waste licensing conditions on the operations of three selected hazardous waste disposal facilities, particularly in terms of compliance with conditions of the issued waste management licences (WML). Furthermore, the costs that are associated with complying with WML conditions, the difficulties encountered by the landfill operators when complying with the WML conditions and the impact of licenced waste disposal on groundwater, was also evaluated. In South Africa, at the time of this study only seven commercial hazardous waste disposal facilities were licensed. However, construction at one of these facilities had not commenced, operations had just commenced at another, and one site was being decommissioned. Therefore, three waste disposal facilities were selected for this study when access to the fourth facility was withdrawn. Qualitative research methods were used to collect data, to evaluate difficulties encountered by landfill operators while ensuring compliance and the costs that were incurred while ensuring compliance. An open-ended questionnaire was used to collect data on difficulties, while a semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect data on the costs that were incurred, and the responses to the questionnaires were provided during site visits conducted by the researcher. The effects of licenced waste disposal facilities on groundwater and the evaluation of landfill compliance with waste management licence conditions were assessed by reviewing external audit reports for the past three years. The findings of the study revealed that the landfill operators have largely been able to comply with WML conditions even though there were difficulties with some of the WML conditions. The study revealed that the costs of complying with conditions of a WML for a hazardous waste disposal site were very high. The study also revealed that the impact of waste disposal activities on groundwater quality was minimal at all three facilities at the time when the external auditors conducted the audits. The study recommends that authorities should work on improving efficiency when processing WML variation applications and there is an opportunity for future research on how authorities should improve efficiency in decision making.