EPA to Review Landfill Air Standards

Date: July 20, 2012

Source: News Room

The EPA filed a proposed consent decree to establish legal deadlines to review whether its outdated new source performance standards (NSPS) for municipal solid waste landfills are still effective. Under the decree, EPA says it will determine by May 1, 2013, whether to update the municipal solid waste landfill NSPS, last revised in 1996, and, if merited, issue a final rule by May 1, 2014. It would resolve a lawsuit brought last year by Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), represented by Earthjustice against EPA (EDF v. Jackson) over the agency's failure to update the standard as required every eight years under the Clean Air Act. EDF in October of 2008 filed a notice-of-intent-to-sue EPA over its failure to update the 1996 landfill NSPS, where it laid out a detailed case for why the agency should include methane limits, saying that landfills regulated by the current NSPS are significant sources of methane, accounting for 22.6 percent of all domestic methane emissions in 2006. The review could alsocall into question whether the agency should adopt first-time limits on landfill greenhouse gas (GHG) methane.

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