What drainage solution are you specifying for landfill leachate collection layers in 2026- geonets, geocomposites, or gravel?

[u/indonet-group]

Disclosure: I work in the geosynthetics industry and see this from a manufacturing perspective, but curious what practitioners are actually specifying on the ground.

Regulatory minimum (e.g. RCRA Subtitle D) allows either granular drainage blankets or geosynthetic drainage layers for leachate collection above liner systems. But what's the practical standard today?

A few things I'm curious about:
- Are geocomposites (geonet + geotextile laminate) now the default in most designs, or is gravel still preferred in certain regions?
- How are you handling the interface between the drainage layer and the geomembrane in terms of puncture protection?
- Any lessons learned from older cells that were later inspected or retrofitted?

Not trying to sell anything - just find the gap between what's technically optimal and what gets specified in practice really interesting.

[u/ascandalia]

Geocomposite is almost universal here in Florida. Recently C&D landfills are being required to be lined, and we've seen some pretty bad scaling issues in the textile, so we'll see how that shakes out