Oklahoma U.S. Senators James Lankford and Markwayne Mullin contend the EPA’s latest proposed rule regarding waste-to-energy (WTE) operations might be going too far and hurt Oklahoma landfill operations, such as those in Lawton, Oklahoma City, Enid, Tulsa and Sand Springs.
The two solons sent a letter to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan to express their concern about the proposed rule. Mullin is the ranking member of the Environment and Public Works’ Chemical Safety, Waste Management, Environmental Justice, and Regulatory Oversight Subcommittee.
The EPA’s proposed rule would further tighten Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) standards for existing WTE facilities while simultaneously removing compliance exceptions, leading to dramatic and unnecessary increases in compliance costs across Oklahoma “without significant benefit,” the senators asserted.
The lawmakers urged the EPA to reexamine its proposal prior to issuing a final rule to ensure that new standards are consistent with actual data provided.
“Municipal waste combustors, waste-to-energy facilities, are a vital waste management technology that communities and businesses in Oklahoma use to divert waste from landfills, recycle metal, and generate renewable energy,” wrote Mullin and Lankford.
“Communities and businesses in Oklahoma and across the country have invested billions of dollars to ensure these facilities are meeting already-stringent environmental standards set by your agency and by states,” the senators wrote.
Imposing standards that WTE facilities will never meet “is well beyond EPA’s statutory authority,” the two lawmakers continued.
Furthermore, “Expecting our local governments and businesses to achieve standards that are prohibitively expensive or are scientific outliers is unreasonable. If standards are unachievable, or too expensive to achieve, communities may have no choice but to close WTE facilities.”
The proposed rule refers to the Standards of Performance for New Stationary Sources and Emission Guidelines for Existing Sources: Large Municipal Waste Combustors, Voluntary Remand Response and 5 Year Review, which includes a re-evaluation of the MACT floor determinations issued on January 23, 2024.
The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 established the MACT standards to ensure that all facilities in an industry sector meet the same standards as the top 12% of performing facilities. The EPA set these attainable standards, known as ‘MACT floors’, for WTE facilities twice: in 1995 and 2006.
Earlier this year the Lawton City Council approved the annexation of a quarter-section of land the city owns on the east side of the sanitary landfill, at the northwest corner of Southwest Tinney Road and South Railroad Street, for a “renewable” natural gas project managed by Comanche Renewables.
Renewable natural gas is the term used to describe “pipeline- quality biogas produced from various biomass sources … through a biochemical process that has been processed to purity standards and is interchangeable with conventional natural gas.”
Instead of allowing methane from landfills to escape into the atmosphere, landfill gas can be captured, converted, and used as a renewable energy resource.
For the last six years Oklahoma City’s landfill has gathered biogas that is processed and transported by a third party to ONEOK’s natural gas pipeline.
Last November the Oklahoma Corporation Commission authorized Oklahoma Natural Gas Co., this state’s largest natural gas provider, to launch a pilot project that will increase its fuel supplies with “renewable” natural gas, not only from landfills but also from food waste and from anaerobic digesters at wastewater treatment plants.
When Enid’s “Scissortail Renewables” facility becomes operational, it will capture the naturally occurring methane gas from household waste and convert it into low-carbon gas that will be injected into an existing ONEOK pipeline to deliver natural gas to consumers to heat homes and fuel businesses.
In January 2023, on the eastern side of the state, the Tulsa Authority for the Recovery of Energy (TARE) and Covanta (now Reworld), established a 15-year agreement with a fiveyear renewable option for the continuation of waste-to-energy operations. Consequently, the majority of Tulsan’s household trash is now taken to a facility to be combusted and used for energy as opposed to being immediately landfilled.
The Oklahoma Municipal Power Authority (OMPA) has for many years operated a landfill gas-to-energy plant, the first of its kind in this state, that produces 3 megawatts of power.
OMPA members include Altus, Comanche, Duncan, Eldorado, Frederick, Granite, Mangum, Manitou, Marlow, Olustee, Ryan, and Walters. In addition, Altus City Manager and former State Auditor and Inspector Gary Jones is OMPA’s treasurer.