DENVER - All landfills face a similar challenge.
"Decomposition occurs of organic materials within the landfill as it's compressed, and creates Methane and CO2," said Zachery Clayton, Manager of Environmental Medicine Planning with the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment.
Denver owns the Denver Arapahoe Disposal Site or the so-called DADS Landfill in Arapahoe County. It's operated by Waste Management that currently has a procedure to reduce methane gas.
"We're actually capturing landfill methane gas, sending it to an electric engine plant, and we convert that gas into electricity and export it to the grid. Many of the residents throughout Denver enjoy that electricity, not even knowing that it came from the landfill," said Brian Snyder, Director of Operations for Waste Management (WM) Renewable Energy.
In that process, there is excess methane that is then burned off, or 'flared.'
"What it does is, it burns all the methane off, and then there's subsequent pollutants that go into there, such as sulfur oxides and things like that, nitrous oxides," said Clayton.
WM and the City and County of Denver recently agreed on a partnership to change and update that whole process.
WM is hoping to pay for and build a new renewable natural gas plant at the DADS landfill.
"It's going to capture about 98% of the methane that comes out of the landfill. It goes to the plant, it scrubs it, it cleans it to 98% and then it puts it into a pipeline and transmission line and goes out for distribution," said Clayton.
The renewable natural gas can then be used as power.
"We're going to collect over a million MMBtu of gas from the landfill, and that's going to power nearly 15,000 homes with natural gas," said Snyder.
Snyder adds WM has already started investing into compressed natural gas vehicles, and plans to use some of the gas from the new plant to power around 900 trash collection vehicles a year.
There's another large impact for anyone outside the landfill.
"Improve the air quality: that's number one, which is extremely beneficial. It takes something that's currently, could be dangerous, and puts it as a beneficial reuse," said Clayton.
The project still needs to go through the planning and permitting phase. Clayton said that will also include a public input process.
If approved to move forward, the plant could be up and running by 2027.
