LOCAL GOVERNMENT COALITION FOR

RENEWABLE ENERGY 

1000 Potomac Street, N.W., Fifth Floor, Washington, D.C. 20007 

Phone: (202) 298-1788

Barron County Waste-to-Energy 

and Recycling Facility 

(Almena, Wisconsin) 

City of Ames, Iowa 

City and County of Honolulu, 

Hawaii 

City of Huntsville Solid Waste 

Disposal Authority 

(Huntsville, Alabama) 

County Sanitation Districts of 

 Los Angeles County 

(Whittier, California) 

ecomaine (Portland, Maine) 

Kent County Board of Public 

Works, Waste-to-Energy Facility 

(Grand Rapids, Michigan) 

Lancaster County Solid 

Waste Management Authority 

(Lancaster, Pennsylvania) 

Lee County, Florida 

Marion County, Oregon 

Mid-Maine Waste Action Corp. 

(Auburn, Maine) 

Northeast Maryland Waste 

Disposal Authority 

(Baltimore, Maryland) 

Solid Waste Authority of 

Palm Beach County 

(Palm Beach, Florida) 

Spokane Regional Solid Waste 

System (Spokane, Washington) 

Wasatch Integrated Waste 

Management District 

(Layton, Utah) 

York County Solid Waste Authority 

(York, Pennsylvania) 

July 1, 2015 

Email: ward.hillary@epa.gov

Ms. Hillary Ward 

Fuels and Incineration Group 

Sector Policies and Programs Division 

Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards 

Environmental Protection Agency 

Research Triangle Park, NC 27711 

Re: Emission Guidelines and Compliance Times for Municipal Solid 

Waste Landfills, Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, 79 

Fed. Reg. 41772

Dear Ms. Ward: 

 This letter concerns the above-referenced Advanced Notice of 

Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) and is submitted by the Local 

Government Coalition for Renewable Energy (Coalition), an alliance of 

local government entities that own (and in various instances also operate) 

state of the art waste-to-energy (WTE) facilities. The Coalition actively 

engages in various WTE-related federal regulatory proceedings and 

legislative matters. Most of the Coalition members, in addition to their 

WTE facilities, also own and operate landfills, a number of which are 

currently subject to the emission guidelines in 40 C.F.R. Part 60. As a 

result, the increased cost that would follow from new federal standards for 

reducing methane and other emissions from landfills are likely to be the 

responsibility of the Coalition members and the communities they serve. 

Be that as it may, methane is a very potent greenhouse gas, and the 

Coalition members’ communities support enhanced measures to reduce 

methane emissions from existing landfills given the important 

environmental protection benefits that will result. We recognize that the 

official period for receipt of comments concerning the ANPRM has 

concluded and sincerely appreciate your indulgence in considering this 

brief comment letter, which, as you will see, focuses on the benefits of 

WTE as a powerful tool to avoid landfill methane. Given the Coalition 

members’ involvement in both WTE and landfilling, we provide a unique, 

well-informed perspective on the broader policy implications of the 

ANPRM, and we appreciate the opportunity to present our views to the 

Agency. 

 Background-Context. As the Agency explains in the ANPRM, 

landfills are a very significant – in fact, the third largest – source of 
LOCAL GOVERNMENT COALITION FOR 

RENEWABLE ENERGY 

 

Ms. Hillary Ward 

July 1, 2015 

Page 2 

methane in the U.S. 79 Fed. Reg. at 41774/3, 41775/2. Methane’s potency as a greenhouse gas 

is widely recognized, including a Global Warming Potential (GWP) 34-times greater than carbon 

dioxide (the 34-times factor is measured over a 100-year cycle; over a 20-year cycle methane’s 

GWP is 86 times greater than CO2). See http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/uploads/-

WGIAR5_WGI-12Doc2b_FinalDraft_All.pdf, at 8-58, Table 8.7. In addition, and as noted in the 

ANPRM, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has determined that methane 

is the second leading long-lived climate forcer after CO2. See 79 Fed. Reg. at 41780/2. The U.S. 

has been referred to as the “Saudi Arabia of trash,” and EPA projects continuing increases in our 

MSW (municipal solid waste) generation as the nation’s population grows. See id. at 41778/3-

41779/1. As a result, the significant environmental concern that landfill methane already poses 

is likely to intensify in the future absent significant changes in policy. 

 The ANPRM identifies a number of regulatory measures that can enhance control of 

methane (and non-methane) emissions at MSW landfills, such as lower design capacity and 

NMOC emission thresholds as triggers for additional control requirements, more accelerated 

installation and operational requirements for landfill gas collection systems, earlier 

implementation of control requirements for landfills that employ leachate recirculation, etc. 

While the Coalition encourages implementation of such measures, the best way to avoid methane 

(and other landfill emissions) is to reduce the United States’ overreliance on landfilling. An 

important analogy that helps to demonstrate this point is provided by EPA’s Clean Power Plan, 

Carbon Pollution Emission Guidelines for Existing Stationary Sources: Electric Utility 

Generating Units; Proposed Rule, 79 Fed. Reg. 34830 (June 18, 2014). More specifically, the 

Clean Power Plan recognizes that although increased thermal efficiency at fossil power plants 

can assist in reducing energy sector GHG emissions, it can only achieve a small portion of the 

necessary reductions, and for that reason the Agency turned to alternative sources of energy (low 

carbon and zero carbon) to achieve our national goals for GHG reduction. The facts pertinent to 

landfill methane are quite similar. Thus, in addition to requiring further reductions of methane 

and other landfill emissions, an even more effective tool – which deserves enhanced federal 

policy support – would be to divert non-recycled waste from landfills to WTE.1

The Role for WTE. The ANPRM refers to the importance of “exploring opportunities to 

achieve additional reductions” in methane and other landfill emissions, including encouragement 

of new technologies. 79 Fed. Reg. at 41774/3 and 41788/1. Given WTE’s very limited use in 

the U.S. (only 7.6 percent of our waste stream is processed at WTE facilities while more than 65 

percent is disposed in landfills), WTE could certainly be viewed as a new (or reemerging) 

technology. While proper waste management begins with waste minimization and recycling, a 

vast amount of material remains for other disposition – burial in landfills or use to produce 

energy at WTE facilities. Landfills add to environmental problems, with methane as a prime 

example, and their contribution to energy supplies (through landfill-gas-to-energy facilities) is 

minimal. WTE, on the other hand, provides excellent environmental protection (as EPA has 

noted, WTE has “less environmental impact than almost any other source of electricity”), see

http://www.energyrecoverycouncil.org/userfiles/file/epaletter.pdf, emits no methane (in fact, WTE 

 

1 A copy of the Coalition’s December 1, 2014 rulemaking comments concerning the Clean Power Plan

are attached. Several of the subjects addressed in this letter are discussed in more detail in the 

Coalition’s December 1 comment letter.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT COALITION FOR 

RENEWABLE ENERGY Ms. Hillary Ward 

July 1, 2015 

Page 3 

serves as a net reducer of carbon emissions to the environment), and WTE facilities generate (per 

unit of waste) more than 10 times the electric energy that is produced when the same amount of 

waste is landfilled (with methane collection and energy recovery). See Is it Better to Burn or 

Bury for Clean Electricity Generation?, pp. 1714-16, February 2009 (available at 

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/es802395e. Thus, as the Agency’s website explains, for every 

ton of MSW that is directed to a WTE facility rather than landfilled, one ton of greenhouse gas 

(GHG) emissions is avoided. See http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/wte/airem.htm

(scroll to “Greenhouse Gases”). The one-ton-avoided figure is actually understated, however, 

because it does not reflect the 36 percent increase in the GWP of methane in the IPCC’s Fifth 

Assessment Report.2

 The importance of comparing the GHG impact of different disposal options, that is, the 

“alternate fate of disposal,” has recently been noted by Acting Assistant Administrator McCabe. 

See Memorandum re Addressing Biogenic Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Stationary Sources, 

p. 2, November 19, 2014 (available at http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/downloads/Biogenic-CO2-

Emissions-Memo-111914.pdf). That comparison has particular resonance in the waste 

management context given the significant opportunity to reduce waste sector GHG emissions by 

diverting currently landfilled waste to WTE. In fact, the United Nations concludes that waste 

sector GHG emissions could be reduced by 80 percent through significant diversion of currently 

landfilled waste to WTE. See Bridging the Emissions Gap, pp. 37-38, November 2011 (available 

at http://www.unep.org/pdf/UNEP_bridging_gap.pdf). To put these points in context, the 

Administration’s Methane Strategy (Climate Action Plan – Strategy to Reduce Methane 

Emissions, available at https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/strategy_to_reduce_methane-

_emissions_2014-03-28_final.pdf) has the goal of reducing the nation’s methane emissions 

(measured as CO2 equivalents) by 90 million tons. That is almost the same reduction the U.S. 

would achieve (87 million tons) if we used WTE at a rate comparable to the European Union (24 

percent versus the U.S.’s 7.6 percent). The 87 million tons would also be equivalent to removing 

nearly 18.2 million cars from the nation’s roads.3

 One disadvantage of WTE is its higher cost. Thus, as shown in the attachment (at pp. 9-

10), WTE tipping fees in the U.S. from 1992 to the present have averaged more than 64.6% 

higher than landfill tipping fees. Although the ANPRM is not, of course, the forum for 

addressing each of the causes for that disparity, the rulemaking to which the ANPRM will lead 

can enhance environmental protection through measures that reduce the current playing field’s 

 

2 EPA’s analysis also shows that WTE has lower criteria pollutant emissions compared to landfills and 

landfill-gas-to-energy facilities. See Is it Better to Burn or Bury for Clean Electricity Generation?, 

pp. 1711-14, 1716-17. 

3

 This calculation is based on: (i) 1.36 tons of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) emissions avoided for each ton of 

MSW diverted from landfills to WTE; (ii) U.S Department of Transportation data for annual CO2e 

emissions per passenger car (4.78 metric tons) (see http://www.epa.gov/OMS/climate/420f05004.htm 

– scroll to Step 6, DOT fuel economy, passenger cars); and (iii) the approximately 389 million tons of 

MSW generated in the U.S. in 2011 (see Generation and Disposition of Municipal Solid Waste 

(MSW) in the United States – A National Survey, p. 19, January 2014 (available at 

http://www.seas.columbia.edu/earth/wtert/sofos/Dolly_Shin_Thesis.pdf). In addition, the calculation 

excludes the 7.6 percent of MSW already being diverted to WTE. 
LOCAL GOVERNMENT COALITION FOR 

RENEWABLE ENERGY Ms. Hillary Ward 

July 1, 2015 

Page 4 

steep tilt in favor of landfilling compared to WTE. Moreover, the adverse environmental impact 

of landfill methane is to a very significant extent a social cost or “externality,” and as President 

Obama’s All-Of-The-Above Energy Strategy emphasizes, policies to encourage renewable energy 

are particularly important when a competing alternative is not required to “internalize” the cost 

of its carbon emissions. See The All-Of-The-Above Energy Strategy As a Path to Sustainable 

Economic Growth, pp. 2 and 5, May 2014 (available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/-

default/files/docs/aota_energy_strategy_as_a_path_to_sustainable_economic_growth.pdf). That 

aptly describes the situation WTE confronts with landfills, and this rulemaking provides an 

important opportunity to initiate a change in the policies that have allowed the environmental 

impact of landfill methane emissions to be externalized as a societal cost. 

* * * 

 The Coalition appreciates your consideration of these comments. If you have questions, 

please call me (256-880-6054 – I am the Executive Director of Coalition member Solid Waste 

Disposal Authority of Huntsville, Alabama, and serve as the Coalition’s chairperson), or our 

counsel (Scott DuBoff and Matt Schneider, 202-965-7880). 

Sincerely, 

John R. (“Doc”) Holladay 

GSB:7144240.2