EPA recently released two enforcement alerts for local governments that operate municipal solid waste landfills.
Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued two enforcement alerts addressing regulatory requirements and associated compliance issues at municipal solid waste landfills (MSW landfills). The alerts address Clean Air Act requirements that control the release of landfill gases (LFG), particularly methane, a climate super pollutant from MSW landfills. The alerts provide an overview of the Clean Air Act regulatory requirements related to landfill air emissions and are intended to help address the climate crisis and ensure that landfill owners, operators, and contractors comply with the law and take the necessary steps to avoid potential EPA enforcement actions.
The first enforcement alert, “EPA Investigations Find Municipal Solid Waste Landfill Operators are Failing to Properly Conduct Compliant Monitoring and Maintenance of Gas Collection and Control System,” is intended to remind MSW landfill owners, operators and their consultants to conduct routine monitoring and maintenance of gas collection systems to ensure all landfill emissions are being properly captured and controlled.
The second enforcement alert, “MSW Landfill Operators Fail to Include Wastes from Total Degradable Waste-in-Place and Properly Sample Landfill Gas, Resulting in Underreported Emissions,” is intended to remind MSW landfill operators, owners and their consultants to properly identify and document nondegradable wastes excluded in calculations and to collect representative LFG samples for non-methane organic compounds analysis and emission calculations.
In 2022, the most recent year for which data is available, methane releases accounted for approximately 14.4 percent of total emissions. This is approximately equivalent to greenhouse gas emissions from more than 24 million gasoline-powered vehicles driven for one year or the carbon dioxide emissions from more than 13.1 million homes’ energy use for one year.
Because methane is both a powerful greenhouse gas and short-lived compared to carbon dioxide, achieving significant reductions will have a rapid and significant effect on reducing the impact on climate change. At the same time, methane emissions resulting from MSW landfills represent a lost opportunity to capture and use a significant energy resource.
The two alerts highlight EPA enforcement actions taken over the past several years to address noncompliance with the Clean Air Act requirements. For example:
- In January 2024 Allied Waste reached a settlement agreement with the EPA regarding Clean Air Act violations at their Niagara Falls Landfill in Niagara Falls, N.Y., which caused excess LFG emissions to be released to the atmosphere. Violations included improper exclusion of areas of gas-generating industrial and construction and demolition (commonly referred to as “C&D”) debris and failure to timely install and operate a gas collection and control system on the active and inactive cells of the landfill.
Under the settlement, Allied Waste will operate a gas collection and control system to reduce the amount of harmful chemicals, primarily methane, as well as other harmful organic compounds, released into the air and paid a $671,000 penalty. This settlement will eliminate 86,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent methane emissions per year. (Read the Jan. 9, 2024 press release.)