Dive Transient:
- The U.S. EPA is soliciting feedback on a collection of white papers relating to landfill administration practices by means of Jan. 23, 2025, the company introduced in a launch. The company stated it’s in search of methods to “streamline, enhance, and harmonize the present suite of emissions rules” for municipal stable waste landfills.
- The company has beforehand indicated that it might replace emissions rules for brand spanking new and present landfills subsequent yr. It beforehand issued an replace in 2016 however that was not totally adopted till 2021.
- In eight white papers, the company included a collection of potential adjustments to its New Supply Efficiency Requirements and Emissions Tips for brand spanking new and present landfills. These adjustments embody including an natural waste diversion credit score, permitting a daily aerial monitoring program, making a methane emission threshold to set off rules for landfills and extra.
Dive Perception:
The EPA has confronted rising stress to replace its MSW landfill rules, together with from Congress. In January, the Senate Committee on Setting & Public Works held a listening to to handle landfill emissions monitoring and mitigation efforts. There, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., stated the EPA has dealt with emissions monitoring poorly for a very long time, and committee management famous the necessity for up to date guidelines.
In Might, a gaggle of 9 senators additionally referred to as on the EPA to ship states more cash to enhance emissions monitoring efforts, noting the company’s personal analysis discovering it’s possible undercounting methane emissions.
“Stronger EPA rules for landfill emissions are crucial to slash planet-warming methane emissions, advance environmental justice, and obtain our local weather commitments,” the senators wrote.
Company employees indicated methane emissions can be a spotlight of EPA’s subsequent rulemaking for landfill emissions, as scientists have begun to grapple with methane’s outsized greenhouse fuel affect. In one of many newly launched white papers, the company proposed including a threshold primarily based on methane emissions which, as soon as surpassed, would require landfills to put in a fuel assortment and management system. Present rules don’t require a landfill to put in such a system primarily based on methane emissions, relying as a substitute on different gases and measurements.
The EPA’s white papers additionally pay attention to rising emissions applied sciences, together with plane and satellites. For its aerial monitoring white paper, the EPA tallied advantages and disadvantages for each distant sensing applied sciences and direct-air sampling, the latter of which is completed by plane. It additionally mentioned potential purposes for the expertise in federal New Supply Efficiency Normal rules, which govern newly commissioned landfills. Lastly, it posed questions on how applied sciences might be included, together with cheap ranges of accuracy and when the expertise must be deployed.
The company’s different white papers comply with the same format. In its fuel assortment system white paper, company employees performed a literature evaluate of greatest practices for the methods. They regarded on the affect of each day barometric stress adjustments and liquid leachate ranges, in addition to expertise to handle these points.
The company additionally proposed making natural waste diversion from landfills a potential element of the subsequent NSPS or EG regulation. Its white paper on that matter acknowledged this as a “departure from the present ‘business-as-usual’ method” to landfill rules.
Within the paper, company employees famous that the Environmental Integrity Mission has beforehand posed natural waste diversion as an “various compliance mechanism” for landfills. The mechanism would work by crediting methane emissions reductions primarily based on the quantity of natural waste a landfill diverts from disposal. The EPA stated it may additionally facilitate that diversion by making a standing approval for tasks like composting and anaerobic digestion undertaken by a landfill operator.
Different matters the white papers lined embody each day, intermediate and last cowl supplies for landfills; fuel management methods set up; and the dimensions threshold previous which landfills should be lined by rules. The company stated it might launch three extra white papers as a part of the identical docket “within the close to future.” It plans to offer a separate alternative for public touch upon any future proposed rule relating to MSW landfills subsequent yr.