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chesapeake climate action network
Petition Demands EPA Take Action on 'Under-the-Radar' Methane Emissions From Landfills
"Protective landfill standards are an urgently needed addition to other significant actions EPA has recently taken to reduce climate-destabilizing and health-harming pollution," said one advocate.
Jun 22, 2023
Joined by two residents of a community where emissions from landfills have forced them to live in the "center of a toxic wasteland," more than a dozen environmental and community advocacy groups on Thursday filed a petition with the Biden administration calling for a number of specific regulations to address the United States' third-largest source of methane pollution.
A month after the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) published a report detailing how the nation's roughly 1,100 city and county landfills emitted at least 3.7 million metric tons of methane in 2021, the group was joined by the Sierra Club, Black Warrior Riverkeeper, Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN), and several other organizations to demand the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) take action.
Javian Baker and Gilda Hagan-Brown, residents of Waggaman, Louisiana, which is adjacent to a landfill, also joined the petition. The emissions coming from the landfill mean that residents' "right to a healthy, safe and clean environment [is] jeopardized," said Hagan-Brown in a statement, and that their "aspirations have been destroyed."
"The foul gassy smell lurking in our neighborhood inhibits me from bringing my fifteen-month-old outside to play," said Baker. "This petition offers a glimpse of hope when politicians in Jefferson Parish and landfill officials have yet to get to the root of the problem impacting our predominately Black community."
Only livestock and natural gas cause more methane emissions than landfills in the U.S., the petitioners noted. Methane has been identified by international climate experts as a key driver of planetary heating. It is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in its first two decades in the atmosphere and 28 times more potent over a 100-year period. Nearly 12% of the United States' contribution to climate change comes from methane emissions, The Hill reported Thursday.
The yearly methane emissions from landfills are equivalent to 295 million metric tons of greenhouse gases over 20-year period, or 66 million gasoline-powered vehicles over a year.
Edwin LaMair, attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund, noted that technological advances in recent years, including the ability to conduct aerial surveys of methane emissions at landfills, offer the EPA "an enormous opportunity to update and strengthen its standards for landfill pollution."
"Landfill pollution poses serious public health threats, and protective landfill standards are an urgently needed addition to other significant actions EPA has recently taken to reduce climate-destabilizing and health-harming pollution," said LaMair.
In its report, Trashing the Climate, last month, EIP noted that landfills contribute to methane emissions mainly due to rotting food waste. Americans throw away roughly 40% of their food and food waste has soared in the last three decades.
The petition calls on the EPA to encourage composting and waste reduction to reduce landfill methane emissions.
The Rocky Mountain Institute explained on social media earlier this week how diverting waste from landfills not only reduces emissions, but also allows the waste to be converted into valuable resources for communities.
The groups on Wednesday also called on the EPA to:
- Require more landfills to install gas collection and control systems, including pipes that collect methane from garbage and covering materials, such as soil, that help absorb and destroy methane;
- Require flares that burn methane at landfills to have at least a 99% destruction efficiency, meaning they burn up almost all of the pollution;
- Require landfills to install gas capture systems within one year after the dumping of waste; and
- Impose better requirements for direct measurement of methane and support the development of equipment that can continuously monitor landfill emissions.
The petition also pointed out that many of the country's landfills are situated in predominantly low-income towns and communities of color.
"Virginia is home to eight 'mega-landfills,' many of which are sited in low-income communities of color," said Anne Havemann, general counsel for CCAN. "These landfills emit huge amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, but have not received the attention they deserve for all the pollution they release. We look forward to EPA taking action on this under-the-radar issue."
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'Our Lungs and Planet Can't Wait': Protesters Demand EPA Pass New Power Plant Rules
"For the sake of good health, justice, and the climate, we need action now from the EPA," said one organizer of the Washington, D.C. rally.
Apr 04, 2023
Activists from a coalition of over 150 environmental justice groups rallied and marched in Washington, D.C. Tuesday to demand that the Biden administration "quit delaying rules to curb harmful pollution that kills thousands of Americans every year."
At the noon "EPA Stop Smoking" rally outside U.S. Environmental Protection Agency headquarters, the demonstrators—who represented groups as diverse as 350.org, Center for Biological Diversity, Interfaith Power & Light, and Hip Hop Caucus—had one resounding message: "Deliver power plant rules now."
"For the sake of good health, justice, and the climate, we need action now from the EPA," said Quentin Scott, federal policy director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network—a coalition member and lead rally organizer. "Any further delays by the agency will put lives in danger and create the risk of a future hostile administration arriving in time to reverse everything."
\u201cHey @EPA: 150 of us are here calling for #NoMoreDelays on fossil fuel pollution rules. We have four demands for you to clean up your act. #PleaseStopSmoking and listen! \n\nhttps://t.co/djGOTxAK7d\u201d— Chesapeake Climate (@Chesapeake Climate) 1680625463
"We're gratified that EPA has been listening over the past few months, since we started this campaign," Scott added. "We're here today with our allies to urge the EPA to build on recent momentum and break the bad habit of delaying industry pollution rules."
According to a March report from coalition member Evergreen Collaborative, "the White House's latest Unified Regulatory Agenda shows that EPA is falling behind on eight key climate change and air quality regulations for the power sector, with only two rules on track."
"After several delays and missed deadlines, EPA must go further, faster to finalize these rules during President [Joe] Biden's first term and keep our climate and environmental justice targets within sight," the report argues.
\u201cWe made it to @CCAN's rally today in DC to ask @EPA to stop the delay on power plant rules!\n\n#EPAStopTheDelay #StopPollution #ClimateChange #CleanEnergy #Solar #CommunitySolar #StopFossilFuels #WeGoBeyond #BCorp #BusinessforGood\u201d— Neighborhood Sun (@Neighborhood Sun) 1680636238
The coalition is demanding that the EPA:
- End the delays and release carbon standards for power plants in April, as promised;
- Strengthen the soot standard for power plants;
- Update and expedite mercury and air toxics standards;
- Take action on coal ash;
- Approve California's vehicle emissions waiver; and
- Implement cumulative impact analysis in permitting.
"The EPA has a legal and moral responsibility to ensure our air and water is clean, which requires protecting frontline communities from the adverse health impacts and toxic pollution from coal and gas plants," Hip Hop Caucus climate policy director Russell Armstrong said.
"The Biden administration claimed to make environmental justice and climate action top priorities yet has repeatedly failed to deliver on its own self-imposed deadlines," he added. "EPA finalizing these power plant rules is a vital step in fulfilling campaign promises to help vulnerable Americans and set our nation on the path to a cleaner, greener, and more equitable future."
\u201cAt a protest on Tuesday\u2013no, not that one\u2013demonstrators outside EPA headquarters in DC had a modest request for an agency that has fallen behind on pledges of tighter climate and clean air regulations: \u201cDo your job.\u201d https://t.co/B9e2dcLDY4\u201d— Phil McKenna (@Phil McKenna) 1680649574
Lois Wessel of the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, one of the coalition groups, said: "Over 100,000 Americans die of air pollution every year. EPA's habit of delaying rules for dirty energy power plants means that those plants are continuing business as usual—so people are getting sick, especially in poor communities, and the planet keeps warming."
"EPA was scheduled to release their carbon pollution rules in June 2022 and then in March 2023 but they punted both times," Wessel added. "Now the EPA needs to fulfill that promise and issue those rules before the end of April. Our lungs and planet can't wait!"
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