Zahle Solid Waste Facility Leachate Assessment

Zahle's Solid Waste Facility was built at its current site in 2001 with World Bank funding that also closed the old dumpsite and transferred its waste into Cell 0 of the sanitary landfill. The original facility had limited capacity and served mainly Zahle municipality; a USAID-CHF fund expanded its sorting capacity in 2006. Over two decades of operation, leachate management became the facility's most pressing environmental risk.

Libanconsult delivered the leachate management assessment between February and June 2021 for UNDP.

The study characterised leachate quantity and quality at multiple sources across the facility, assessed the condition of the existing leachate infrastructure, screened and selected treatment technologies compatible with site conditions, and prepared terms of reference, bills of quantities and cost estimates for a design-build procurement.

UNDP and the facility's operators received a validated leachate strategy and a procurement-ready intervention package for the most acute operational risk at a legacy Bekaa facility.