A MOVE TO MAKE LANDFILLS SAFER

New regulations are supposed to better identify and more quickly respond to methane leaks and underground fires

- By Tony BRISCOE

A vast canyon of buried has been garbage smoldering inside a landfill in the Santa Clarita Valley, inducing geysers of liquid waste onto the surface and noxious fumes into the air.

In the Inland Empire, fires have broken out on the surface of another landfill. In the San Fernando Valley, an elementary school occasionally has canceled recess because of toxic gases emanating from rain-soaked, rotting garbage at a nearby landfill. And, in the San Francisco Bay Area, burrowing rodents may be digging into entombed trash at a landfill-turned-park, unloosing explosive levels of methane.

These are just a few of the treacherous episodes that recently transpired at landfills in California, subjecting the state's waste management industry to growing scrutiny by residents and regulators.

Landfill emissions-produced by decaying food, paper and other organic waste - are a major source of planet-warming greenhouse gases and harmful air pollution statewide. But mismanagement, aging equipment and inadequate oversight have worsened this pollution in recent years, according to environmental regulators and policy experts.

This week the California Air Resources Board voted to adopt a new slate of requirements to better identify and more quickly respond to methane leaks and underground disastrous fires at large landfills statewide.

The changes call for using satellites, drones and other new technologies to more comprehensively investigate methane leaks.

They also require landfill operators to take corrective action within days of finding methane leaks or detecting elevated temperatures within their pollution control systems.