The movement of water in a large (3.5 m3) undisturbed sample of 22-year-old municipal solid waste has been modeled using a kinematic wave approximation for unsaturated infiltration and internal drainage. The model employs a two-parameter power expression as macroscopic flux law. The model parameters were determined and interpreted in terms of the internal geometry of the waste medium by fitting the model to one set of infiltration and drainage data. The model was validated using another set of data from a sequence of water input events. The results of the validation show that the model performs satisfactorily, but further development of the model to incorporate spatial variability would increase its capability. ¿ 1998 American Geophysical Union