California Air Resources Board

In 2016, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency published the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Municipal Solid Waste Landfill Emission Guidelines and Compliance Timelines for Municipal Solid Waste Landfills (Emission Guidelines), which require the installation of a landfill gas collection and control system (GCCS) at certain landfills. However, many of the landfills covered by the Emission Guidelines were already subject to the State’s Landfill Methane Regulation and were already required to install and operate a GCCS. Because the Emission Guidelines require that states submit plans that identify how each state intends to meet the federal requirements, and because all the landfills covered by the Emission Guidelines already had GCCSs installed, California utilized the Landfill Methane Regulation for California’s State Plan to implement the Emission Guidelines. In early 2020, U.S. EPA partially approved and partially disapproved California’s State Plan. In May 2021, U.S. EPA finalized a Federal Plan to implement the Emission Guidelines for existing municipal solid waste landfills, which includes specific reporting requirements in addition to those required by CARB under LMR.
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