Landfill gas has 'year of milestones'
- February 7, 2013
- By Jim Johnson
Jim Johnson, Waste & Recycling News Valerie Nielson, vice president of operations for ATZ Applied Technologies Ltd. of Carp, Ontario, explains her company's landfill gas equipment to Jason Hoyle, research analyst at the Appalachian State University Energy Center in Boone, N.C., at last week's Landfill Methane Outreach Program Conference and Project Expo in Baltimore.
Baltimore – Domestic landfill gas use has surpassed another milestone as more than 600 locations around the country are now operational, according to a federal program that tracks such data.
New data unveiled at last week's Landfill Methane Outreach Program Conference and Project Expo in Baltimore puts the current tally at 605 operational projects with the potential to develop another 445 sites.
LMOP, part of the U.S. EPA, keeps a running tally of such projects and said California leads the way with 75 working projects.
Other states with significant landfill gas development include Pennsylvania with 41 locations now operating, Michigan with 39, Illinois with 33 and Virginia with 31. New York has 29, Wisconsin has 28, North Carolina has 24 and Indiana has 22. Following closely are Massachusetts with 21, Ohio with 20, Florida with 19, and Georgia and New Jersey, both with 18.
At the other end of the spectrum, Wyoming, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands all do not have any operational projects.
LMOP officials, at last year's conference, reported that 576 projects were in operation and they expressed hopes the 600-project barrier would be broken by the end of 2012.
"That's a huge milestone for us because when LMOP first started calculating operational project status back in '95, we were at 182, so every year we keep growing, the number of operational projects keeps going up," said Swarupa Ganguli, team leader at the LMOP program.
That number will surely increase in 2013. Ganguli indicated there are 35 additional projects either under construction or in advanced planning stages.
As the number of working projects increases over the years, the number of candidate landfills across the nation actually went down last year. That number typically always hovered around 500 or so as new landfill candidates continually were being identified to replace those that became operational.
The number of candidate sites now sits at 445, which the team leader indicated was "another milestone which looks bad, but is actually good." That's because it means landfill gas projects are continuing to be developed, she said.
LMOP also reached the 1,000 mark in its partnership program last year and now has 1,062 entities that officially have signed on with the voluntary program to promote the use of landfill gas.
Calling it "a year of milestones," Ganguli indicated that attendance at this year's conference also was at an all-time high with 662 people pre-registered for the gathering.
"That is a record for us," he said. "It is the largest conference ever."
This year's record compares to 42 folks who attended the very first LMOP conference 16 years ago, and 616 who pre-registered last year.
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