A huge landfill in Oregon is spewing methane. Its owners want to expand.

Numerous safety violations have been detected at the fast-growing landfill. It’s part of a larger pattern of problems with how the U.S. handles waste.

Canary Media, Isobel Whitcomb

In rural Benton County, brigades of waste-collection vehicles lumber through forested hills and wheat fields, each truck trailed by an acrid stench. They’re hauling trash from across the western half of the state to Coffin Butte Landfill. The site accepts waste from nearly two dozen of Oregon’s 36 counties, and the pile towers high enough that some locals call it "the Great Pyramid of Benton County.” Joel Geier, who lives half a mile away from Coffin Butte, prefers the moniker "Coughing Butte,” due to the noxious, chemical smell that sometimes emanates from it.

In the U.S. and worldwide, landfills are the third-largest source of the greenhouse gas methane, which over 20 years traps 80 times as much heat in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. But the gases emitted as waste decomposes aren’t just harmful to the climate — they also pose a more immediate hazard to nearby communities. Alongside methane, landfills emit a cocktail of chemicals known to irritate the lungs, increase the risk of cancer, and cause reproductive issues.

Over the past decade, the amount of garbage imported by Coffin Butte Landfill has more than doubled. To continue to accommodate Oregon’s garbage, Republic Services, the company that owns Coffin Butte, says that the landfill needs to expand. Neighbors of the landfill, concerned about its climate impact and the community’s safety, believe that there are better ways to deal with all the incoming refuse.

Coffin Butte Landfill is covered to prevent gases like methane from escaping, but EPA inspections found that the cover was eroding in places. (E.J. Harris)

For many residents of Soap Creek Valley and Adair Village, Coffin Butte Landfill wasn’t a major concern until about a decade ago. Under the ownership of Republic Services, which had acquired Coffin Butte in 2008, the landfill was taking trash from a larger swath of Oregon — and even occasionally Washington state. Then in 2016, the closure of another regional landfill led to an unprecedented amount of waste being diverted to Coffin Butte: an addition of more than 400,000 tons over the next year.

In early 2021, Republic Services submitted an application for a permit to expand the landfill. At that point, the company was importing more than 1 million tons of trash to Coffin Butte each year — close to Benton County’s 1.1-million-ton cap on waste deposited there annually. At this rate, the landfill would reach capacity within five years. The application proposed adding a second, 270-foot-tall pile of waste across Coffin Butte Road, which would buy the landfill another 12 years but close off what is the area’s primary evacuation route in the event of wildfire. The proposal also sought to remove the tonnage cap on waste deposited at Coffin Butte..

In response, more than 100 community members rallied to oppose the expansion, giving testimony at hearings and writing letters to local newspapers.

In December 2021, the Benton County Planning Commission denied the expansion request, but residents considered it only a temporary victory. Earlier this year, they began hearing talk that a second application was in the works. Sure enough, on July 19, Republic Services filed anew.

Neither methane nor CO2 poses an immediate risk to human health, but the other 10 percent of landfill gases, emitted by waste more resistant to decomposition, do. As the residents fighting the Coffin Butte Landfill expansion researched these effects, they turned to environmental nonprofit Beyond Toxics, based in the nearby city of Eugene. Beyond Toxics began setting up air-quality monitors around houses near the landfill to track emissions of nitrogen dioxide, or NO2. The monitors recorded NO2 concentrations as high as 60–80 parts per billion — close to readings collected near freeways and well above the 30 parts per billion that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers safe for chronic exposure.

Operators of Coffin Butte were using ash from a nearby waste incinerator as daily cover for the landfill. This practice isn’t inherently unsafe, according to Philipp Schmidt-Pathmann, founder and CEO of the Institute for Energy and Resource Management, a nonprofit that advocates for sustainable waste management. However, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality safety protocol states that landfill cover should be wetted down before application to prevent particulates from becoming airborne. Beyond Toxics found that landfill operators were skipping this step — photo and video evidence showed plumes of ash blowing from the landfill.

The landfill viewed from Coffin Butte Road, Soap Creek Valley's primary evacuation route in case of wildfire. (Isobel Whitcomb)

In 2022, an EPA inspection found explosive levels of methane at Coffin Butte Landfill. While the federal limit for methane concentrations is 500 parts per million, the EPA reported 21 readings exceeding 10,000 parts per million.
Carbon Mapper, a tool that tracks CO2 and methane emissions, has detected plumes of methane over Coffin Butte exceeding 1,000 kilograms per hour. A plume exceeding even 100 kilograms per hour is designated by the EPA as a "super-emitter event,” said Katherine Blauvelt, the circular-economy campaign director for Industrious Labs, a nonprofit working to clean up heavy industry.

In the case of Coffin Butte, inspectors didn’t just find explosive methane levels, they found malfunctioning extraction systems and eroding covers. Similar violations have repeatedly been discovered elsewhere.

The EPA has committed to addressing these widespread regulatory failures — on July 23, the agency announced that it would update emissions standards for landfills in 2025. But tighter emissions standards don’t address a major root cause of the problem.

There are financial incentives for landfill operators to minimize maintenance costs while bringing in more waste, says Schmidt-Pathmann of the Institute for Energy and Resource Management. "Waste is a profit-oriented business in the U.S.,” he added. For landfills like Coffin Butte, more waste means more revenue.

Coffin Butte Landfill viewed from overhead, with Soap Creek Valley in the background. (E.J. Harris)

Schmidt-Pathmann believes it’s in Benton County’s best interest to consider the long-term costs — both monetary and nonmonetary — of hosting Coffin Butte. Long after that landfill runs out of space, it will need to be managed. "You will have to maintain a landfill forever. It’s like taking a loan from the bank without ever planning to pay it back,” Schmidt-Pathmann said. "At some point, the bank — or the environment — will come collecting.”

Find the original article by Isobel Whitcomb at Canary Media here.

More news:

California and Other Four Environmental Groups Filed a Lawsuit Against ExxonMobil Over Plastic Pollution

Recent efforts to clean up 'Las Vacas' river, one of the most polluted rivers worldwide

The Slovakian government plans to change the country's deposit return system for single beverage containers

New Ikea Preowned Platform

Obituary for Professor Frank Roethel

4 out of 5 People Globally Want Stonger Climate Action by their Governments

Conclusions, Recommendations and Lessons Learned from the 5th Conference on Energy Valorisation of Municipal Waste Organised by WtERT Colombia - SAI

New York City mayor Eric Adams excitedly introduced a garbage can as a “garbage revolution” to fight rats

Recycling of ships and the Hong Kong Convention

A New Bill to Ban Disposal of Batteries is passed in New Hampshire