Vermont Landfill
One landfill currently services the state of Vermont. It is located 70 miles from the center of Chittenden County in Coventry, VT. The Moretown Landfill, operated by IWS Inc./Vt. Hauling, is closed.
http://cleantechnica.com/2014/05/08/active-landfill-vermont-goes-solar/
May 8th, 2014byGuest post byJoe Harrison,Senior Project Developer at Borrego Solar
The only active landfill in Vermont, located in Coventry, Vt., is going solar—in stride with the rising trend of landfill solar development across the United States.
The 2.7-megawatt (MW) system, which was designed and is currently being built byBorrego Solarand financed by a joint venture betweenGreenwood EnergyandSoltagecalled Soltage Greenwood, will be installed on the landfill site’s buffer zone, alongside an existing 8 MW gas-to-energy generating facility that utilizes the methane captured from both the active and capped sections of the landfill.
The entire site is owned byCasella Waste Systems, and the ground-mounted solar array consisting of 9,018 panels is expected to generate approximately 3,199 megawatt-hours annually, enough to power 261 homes for an entire year. The power generated will be sold to Vermont Electric Power Producers under the state’s Sustainably Priced Energy Development (SPEED) Standard Offer Program—one of the nation’s firstfeed-in-tariffprograms. Solar energy capacity has tripled in Vermont in the last three years, and the state currently ranks first in solar jobs per capita, nationwide.
The project required zero upfront costs from Casella Waste Systems thanks to a power purchase agreement (PPA) with Soltage Greenwood.
Landfills: A Rising Leader in U.S. Solar Adoption
From 1988 to 2009, more than 6,000 landfills in the United States were capped, and many of those sites have been sitting idle. Now, both publicly-owned and privately-owned landfills have increasingly turned to solar in order to put unused land to productive, revenue-generating use through land leases and/or energy savings through solar.
On both a state andnationallevel, environmental departments are actively promoting the development of solar on landfills by assessing potential sites, developing educational tools and providing funding. Massachusetts has been a pioneer state in embracing landfill solar development, despite the fact that only seven percent of landfills are in the Northeast. Altogether, the dozens of recent landfill projects in Massachusetts total more than 78 MW of solar energy production.
Landfill solar projects are picking up, and demand for financing landfill installations through PPAs is also rising. There is still tremendous potential for more development, given that the majority of landfills are located in the sunniest regions of the country—nearly 40 percent are located in the West, and 35 percent are located in the South—and typically in states with policies that support solar.
Landfills and their buffer lands make especially compelling locations for solar project development because they are generally close to interconnection systems and are built on already disrupted and cleared land that typically can’t be used for more traditional commercial development, as in the typical case of a capped landfill, or in vacant buffer zones, such as in the case of the Coventry site.
COVENTRY LANDFILL PERMITTED FOR INCREASED COLLECTIONS
http://vtdigger.org/2013/11/22/coventry-landfill-permitted-increased-collections/
HILARY NILESNOV. 22 2013, 6:51 PM4 COMMENTS
Layout of the Coventry Landfill. Photo by Hilary Niles/VTDigger
Vermont’s only active landfill has been approved to accept waste at nearly double its current rate. Casella Waste Systems Inc., will be able to accept up to 600,000 tons per year at its landfill in Coventry. A new permit from the Agency of Natural Resources raises the yearly limit from 370,000 tons.
Joe Fusco, vice president of Casella, said the permit does not translate to an automatic ramp-up to the higher limits. “It just means you have the authority to reach that rate,” Fusco said. He said Casella will market the landfill regionally to attract new waste streams to the facility near Newport.
In addition to waste streams from many parts of Vermont, the Coventry landfill also accepts some items from outside the state, including sewage sludge and contaminated soil. All out-of-state materials must be approved on a case-by-case basis, Fusco confirmed.
“Anything coming from out of state would have to meet whatever standards Vermont law lays out,” Fusco said.
The landfill is active on a 45-acre parcel called Phase IV. Casella engineer John Gay said in July that Phase IV had about 10 to 15 years of capacity remaining. It was not immediately known to Fusco on Friday how that projection might be changed by the new rate at which the landfill can accept material.
Before moving on to the next phase, Casella will have some work to do. Phase V is actually two old landfills that will have to be excavated, Gay said, and the material must be placed into a lined landfill to conform with modern environmental safety standards.
The permit to increase the rate at which material is accepted at Coventry follows an Environmental Court order for the Florida-based company Advanced Disposal to close and cap theMoretown Landfillin central Vermont. The September consent decree upheld ANR’s March decision to not re-certify the landfill for continued operation, after alleged environmental violations and concerns about odor.
Gay said the permit to increase Coventry’s collections was filed in October 2011.
Fusco said the Moretown closing did change the economics of trash in Vermont. But some border towns, including the Burlington Area Transfer Station, might continue to send their waste out of state.
“The disposal market is not one that understands or recognizes state borders, unless enforced by statute,” Fusco said. “If you’re in Bennington, your options are down in that part of the world, rather than up by the Canadian border.”
Casella has operated the landfill in Coventry since its purchase of the site from a Canadian company in 1995, Fusco said. The company created New England Waste Services of Vermont as a subsidiary to operate the site. Casella operates nearly a dozen other landfills outside Vermont.
http://www.casella.com/what-we-do/landfills
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci0BVqZNcRo
Landfills
Landfills are not going to disappear from solid waste infrastructure; however we see the role of a landfill changing with the shift from resource “consumption” to “sustainability.”
Casella is one of the largest landfill operators in the Northeast, safely managing the disposal of over 3 million tons of solid waste each year. Casella's network oftransfer stationsandlandfill disposal sitesare well positioned to service most major municipalities and communities across the region. We can also provide you with comprehensive transportation assistance and solidification services. We accept a wide range of materials, including:
· Municipal Solid Waste (MSW)
· Construction and Demolition (C&D) Debris
· Sludges
· Contaminated Soils
· Drill Cuttings
· PCB Bulk Waste
· Asbestos - Friable and Non-friable
· Ash
Sustainable Environmental and Economic Development
Casella has differentiated itself in the marketplace by linking recycling and other leading-edge resource management approaches to the solid waste disposal needs of municipalities. We continually work with local and state governments to design, permit, and build environmentally sound landfill disposal facilities to meet the region's ever increasing solid waste needs. We believe that it is important to provide our communities and our customers with in-market disposal options that eliminate the unnecessary environmental impacts of shipping waste to distant disposal sites.
Our SEED™ (Sustainable Environmental and Economic Development) program was conceived of and implemented as a framework to manage disposal capacity in a responsible manner in which the interests of all stakeholders are aligned. Through our investment of time and capital to build a sustainable infrastructure around our disposal projects we have shifted the value of these sites from merely disposal to platforms that include sustainable projects.
Today, our landfill gas collection systems are not merely designed to passively capture gas; these systems are designed to actively extract gas to power landfill gas-to-energy plants producing clean electricity and to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Within our model, landfill sites are environmental campuses where resources are extracted from all aspects of the waste stream.
TUE MAR 09, 2010 AT 01:52 PM PST
The wonders of landfill methane! Take a tour right here!
byitzik shpitzikFollow
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/03/09/844522/-The-wonders-of-landfill-methane-Take-a-tour-right-here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mp6SxzRIvo
Washington Electric Co-op (WEC) has produced a video tour of its landfill methane generating plant in Coventry, Vermont. The ten minute video was recorded during an open house held at the plant on November 4, 2009, and follows the tour actually given to visitors on that day.
The Coventry plant is located at Vermont’s largest landfill, which is owned and operated by New England Waste Services of Vermont (an affiliate of Casella Waste Systems). The facility began generating electricity in July 2005 and was subsequently been expanded in 2007 and 2009 to its present generating capacity of 8 megawatts. It is now generating over two-thirds of all the electricity used by WEC’s members and is expected to be an economical and stably priced source of energy for the Co-op for many years.
What is the cause of methane offgassing from landfills?
How much more potent of a greenhouse gas is methane compared to CO2?
What is the generating capacity of Coventry’s landfill methane plant?
In addition to the Coventry plant, Washington Electric Co-op gets power from a number of small local renewable facilities including its own Wrightsville Hydro Station, as well as from the large hydro facilities of Hydro Quebec and the New York Power Authority. WEC also expects to begin receiving a portion of the output from First Wind’s project in Sheffield VT, which has received approval from the Vermont Public Service Board. WEC has no power supply commitments from fossil fuel or nuclear sources.
Landfill gas has become an increasingly popular form of energy generation, because it makes use of existing resources without additional environmental impact, and displaces other forms of non-renewable generation.
Among the different types of renewable energy, it has a number of very attractive characteristics. First of all, it's usually much cheaper than other renewable energy sources. The primary advantage of landfill gas generation is that it is baseload power. (A baseload power plant is an electric generation plant that is expected to operate in most hours of the year.) Most forms of renewable generation, e.g. wind, solar, and even small hydro, are intermittent sources in that they don't generate all the time, and/or their output fluctuates even when it is generating. Baseload plants are typically fossil fuel (coal, natural gas), nuclear, or large hydro. Among renewable resources, biomass, landfill and farm methane are baseload, and to an electric utility, have the same profile as a nuclear or coal plant (except much, much smaller....)
What is meant by baseload power?
What is the gas reduction benefit of Coventry’s methane recovery system in metric tons of CO2? How many cars is this equivalent to?
The Environmental Protection Agency has been promoting electric generation (and other energy uses) for landfill gas for a number of years. The EPA's Landfill Methane Outreach Program website has pretty much everything you'd want to know on the subject, for starters anyway. It has a database showing all the nation's landfills, which have energy plants (hundreds now) and which may have potential.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Landfill Methane Outreach Program (LMOP) is a voluntary assistance program that helps to reduce methane emissions from landfills by encouraging the recovery and beneficial use of landfill gas (LFG) as an energy resource. LFG contains methane, a potent greenhouse gas that can be captured and used to fuel power plants, manufacturing facilities, vehicles, homes, and more. By joining LMOP, companies, state agencies, organizations, landfills, and communities gain access to a vast network of industry experts and practitioners, as well as to various technical and marketing resources that can help with LFG energy project development.
Municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills are the second–largest source of human–related methane emissions in the United States, accounting for approximately 23 percent of these emissions in 2007. At the same time, methane emissions from landfills represent a lost opportunity to capture and use a significant energy resource. LFG is created as solid waste decomposes in a landfill. This gas consists of about 50 percent methane (the primary component of natural gas), about 50 percent carbon dioxide (CO2), and a small amount of non–methane organic compounds.
Instead of escaping into the air, LFG can be captured, converted, and used as an energy source. Using LFG helps to reduce odors and other hazards associated with LFG emissions, and it helps prevent methane from migrating into the atmosphere and contributing to local smog and global climate change.
LFG is extracted from landfills using a series of wells and a blower/flare (or vacuum) system. This system directs the collected gas to a central point where it can be processed and treated depending upon the ultimate use for the gas. From this point, the gas can be flared, used to generate electricity, replace fossil fuels in industrial and manufacturing operations, or upgraded to pipeline–quality gas where the gas may be used directly or processed into an alternative vehicle fuel.
* Projects help destroy methane, a potent heat-trapping gas.
* Projects generate renewable energy and offset the use of non-renewable resources such as coal, natural gas, and oil.
* There are many cost–effective options for reducing methane emissions while generating energy.
* Projects help reduce local air pollution.
* Projects create jobs, revenues, and cost savings.
LFG emitted from decomposing garbage is a reliable and renewable fuel option that remains largely untapped at many landfills across the United States, despite its many benefits. Generating energy from LFG creates a number of environmental benefits.
Generating energy from LFG creates a number of environmental benefits. List three of these benefits
State sues Moretown Landfill
JOEL BANNER BAIRD4:20 p.m. EST November 6, 2014, Burlington Free Press
Owners of the Moretown landfill repeatedly violated state environmental regulations, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday by Vermont officials in Washington Superior Court.
The facility stopped receiving new waste in July 2013 — leaving the state with just one operating landfill, in Coventry.
The state’s complaint alleges Moretown Landfill Inc. failed to contain landfill gas, maintain the facility’s cover, monitor liquid waste (leachate) and restrict stormwater discharge, according to a statement released by the Office of the Attorney General.