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The Santa Fe Solid Waste Management Agency announces that construction will begin in late September on a landfill gas collection and control system at the Agency’s Caja Del Rio Landfill, which is located northwest of the City and west of Highway 599. The Agency’s Joint Powers Board at its August 11 meeting awarded the $1.057 million construction contract to Comanco Environmental Corporation of Plant City, Florida. Construction will be completed and the system fully operational by April 2010.

The new collection and control system will consist of 15 landfill gas collection wells throughout all areas of the landfill which have had waste in place for five or more years. The system will be expanded in the future as filling progresses. A blower will pull the landfill gas from the vertical wells through below-ground horizontal pipes to an enclosed flare that will burn the gas.

The Agency selected an enclosed flare for the system so that the flame will not be clearly visible from the surrounding areas. The emissions from an enclosed flare can be more closely monitored and controlled than from an open flare.

Methane, which has over twenty times the greenhouse gas effect as carbon dioxide, is a main component of landfill gas. Therefore, by destroying landfill gas, the Agency will be significantly reducing the landfill’s greenhouse gas emissions. For example, with a methane content of 50% at a flow rate of 300 cubic feet per minute the Agency will destroy 1,600 tons of methane per year or 33,600 tons of carbon dioxide “equivalents” which would normally be released into the atmosphere.

The Agency is also considering a landfill gas-to-energy project which it may pursue in the future depending on the amount and quality of landfill gas that is collected from this initial phase of construction.

For more information contact Landfill Manager Randy Watkins at 424-1850, ext. 130.