Colorado regulators will spend the next two days coming up with the first regulations designed to reduce emissions from landfills in a hearing whose main debate will be how far they should go to mandate pricier new technology across the state.
Landfills are the third-largest generator of methane emissions in the state, producing about 1.445 million metric tons of carbon-dioxide equivalent in 2020, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Landfill operators acknowledge the facilities’ contribution to methane emissions but also note that contribution encompasses less than 1% of emissions produced in Colorado.
The effort to reduce methane emissions is part of a legislative directive to cut overall greenhouse gas emissions 50% by 2030 as compared to 2005 levels and to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. The Colorado Energy Office further identified the landfill strategy in its Greenhouse Gas Pollution Reduction Roadmap update last year, pointing to it as a near-term action that can show results quickly.
What the new rules would do
Maybe the biggest requirement of the proposed Regulation 31 would be to increase from 13 to 31 the number of statewide landfills that must operate gas collection and control systems. These systems gather gas created by the decomposition of waste and route it to a flare, which burns off methane and other harmful pollutants.
But the proposal also proposes requiring operators of these landfills to more closely examine their collection systems for leaks by monitoring surface emissions at intervals of 25 feet rather than the 100-foot distance that the federal government requires. And it mandates that collection pipes that now are required to be put in after waste has been collecting in an area of the landfill for five years go in at the two-year mark instead, which will speed up cost requirements.
Finally, the regulation proposes the use of new or updated tools to help with emissions detection and eradication, including enclosed flares that would replace more common open flares and biocovers to speed decomposition of organic materials. A CDPHE economic analysis pinned the total cost of compliance with the proposed rules at $209.6 million, which it said could increase tipping fees by $3.66 per household annually.
The economic analysis also said, however, that the new emissions-control tactics could lead to the capture and destruction of between 11.28 million and 12.53 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent between 2029 and 2050. That would avoid between $1 billion and $1.11 billion in climate-change costs that include avoided sick days and medical costs, particularly for the 2.3 million Coloradans living withing five miles of a landfill, advocates for the new rules argue.
A debate of costs versus benefits
A WM frontline operations employee helps oversee the disposal of waste at a landfill.
Colorado Air Quality Control Commission members who consider the rules over the next two days, then, will debate whether the regulations are feasible or are largely “technically, practically and economically infeasible,” as WM argued in a prehearing statement. WM, formerly known as Waste Management, is the nation’s largest operator of landfills, including six active sites and two inactive sites in Colorado.
WM, as well as local governments who operate smaller city and county landfills, say the burden on them will be significant and will far outweigh the benefits achieved by the high-cost mandates. Those financial burdens will be reflected in the bills of households and businesses that contract for waste disposal, and operational burdens will be compounded by a state permitting system that faces a significant backlog and, thus, will be slow to allow installation of these new emissions-lowering devices, company officials said.
“It’s a steep change in regulation of an industry that already is regulated by the federal government, said Brian Dodek, WM’s senior manager for environmental protection. “These are some pretty big wholesale changes in the way we do emissions monitoring.”
Proposal already has undergone changes
Environmental advocates, however, have argued in prehearing filings and in news releases that they believe the state could go even further in what it demands by tightening standards around areas like flare installation and biocover requirements. And they argue the new regulations are needed quickly, which is why 30 organizations ranging from Conservation Colorado to Arapahoe Basin Ski Area banded together to successfully oppose a request last month to delay the rulemaking until December.
“Coloradans with existing health conditions, children and the elderly are especially vulnerable to air pollution from landfills, which are associated with severe and chronic health conditions like asthma, organ damage and cancer,” the groups wrote in a letter to the AQCC opposing the request for delay. “The longer we wait, the more methane and harmful gas escape into the atmosphere — locking in short-term warming, worsening air quality and threatening Coloradans’ health.”
Yet CDPHE already has amended its proposed rules to delay them three more years specifically for smaller government-owned landfills, which argued that the cost of compliance was unreasonable. Mesa County Commissioner Cody Davis said in public comments to the AQCC on July 17 that compliance would cost $1.7 million annually — a cost four times what the county now spends operating its landfill, which would require it to double its $30/ton tipping fee for haulers.
Through negotiations, WM and the National Waste and Recycling Association also have gotten CDPHE to amend its biocover requirements to make installation of the organic-material covers optional if soil is available to cover landfill materials instead. And while the division still is seeking to mandate the use of enclosed flares, which WM argues are twice as expensive as open flares but no more efficient, operators can petition regulators that the open flares may be needed for feasibility.
Landfills the latest emissions-reduction target
The rulemaking continues the AQCC’s efforts to reduce emissions from a variety of sectors, which in recent years have included oil wells, midstream gas facilities, industrial plants, commercial buildings and lawn-and-garden equipment. This hearing is likely to attract less attention than some of the previous ones, however, as it will happen simultaneously with the first two days of a special legislative session in which elected officials will try to close a $783 million budget shortfall and agree upon artificial-intelligence regulations.
Both landfill operators and clean-air advocates want people to know, though, that even if they are not paying close attention, the outcome of deliberations will affect them.
GreenLatinos noted in its prehearing statement, for example, that the state remains off-track to hit its emissions targets for this year (26% reduction) or 2030 and needs new rules like this to try to reach those and future marks.
“Going to change how landfills operate”
“Air pollutants emitted from landfills pose a grave threat to the climate and to public health,” the organization wrote. “Composed primarily of methane, carbon dioxide, volatile organic compounds and hazardous air pollutants, emissions of landfill gas are harmful in a variety of ways.”
But Dodek cautioned that some proposed provisions may not be technically achievable, such as the increased surface emissions monitoring that could require landfills to try to hire more consultants and rent more equipment than is available in Colorado. And because the rules go into place beginning next year, it also is extremely unlikely that state permitters will be able to review all the equipment that landfills will need to install, meaning they will have to invest resources in putting it in first and risk having to pull it out later if rejected by the state.
“We have multiple deadlines to meet. CDPHE has zero deadlines to approve permits,” Dodek said. “It’s going to be very impactful. And, in a way, it’s going to change how landfills operate going forward.”