SACRAMENTO, California — California regulators on Tuesday proposed tightening their methane emissions standards for landfills.
What happened: The California Air Resources Board proposed tightening its Landfill Methane Regulation, which requires landfills to install gas collection and control systems to minimize emissions. The draft amendments would impose additional rules on landfill operators with the goal of reducing methane — one of the most-potent global warming gases — and other emissions.
The draft rules would require more stringent leak monitoring, planning for emissions when pollution-preventing infrastructure goes offline and require the use of mobile tools — such as drone-mounted laser scanners — to identify leaks in inaccessible areas that are currently unmonitored.
CARB cited recent research that found large methane plumes have been originating from areas of landfills that are excluded from routine monitoring under the current rules.
