LAWTON – Development of a renewable natural gas facility at the sanitary landfill south of town is progressing and should be finished nearly next year, city officials say.
Methane gas from the city’s solid-waste landfill will be collected for scrubbing and conversion into usable natural gas.
Earlier this year the City Council approved the annexation of 160 acres the city owns on the east side of the landfill, at the northwest corner of SW Tinney Road and S Railroad, for a renewable natural gas (RNG) project managed by Comanche Renewables. Sparq Natural Gas of Oklahoma City is the registered agent for Comanche Renewables, the Secretary of State’s records show.
RNG is a pipeline-quality gas that is fully interchangeable with conventional natural gas and can be used to heat homes and businesses. RNG is essentially biogas (the gaseous product of the decomposition of organic matter) that has been processed to purity standards.
In addition, RNG, like conventional natural gas, can be used as a transportation fuel in the form of compressed natural gas (CNG) or liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Lawton’s landfill has had gas wells for years. “It is used to flare off the gas, as opposed to letting those greenhouse gases escape into the atmosphere,” city spokesperson Caitlin Gatlin said. “Methane is more potent untreated as opposed to when it’s burned off.” Flaring also reduces odors, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency notes.
Gas collection in the landfill will be expanded to other, newer areas of the trash dump that were not serviced previously, Gatlin said. When the project is completed, Sparq/Comanche Renewables will take over maintenance of those locations from another company, she said.
A landfill gas-to-energy plant is under construction at the landfill and its estimated completion date is sometime next January, according to Jason Mansell, Lawton’s solid waste collection and disposal superintendent.
That facility will convert the landfill’s methane gas into usable natural gas, which will be “compressed and pressurized and then pumped into one of the gas lines feeding into the city,” Gatlin said.
Sparq’s website says the company is “accelerating America’s transition to more affordable transportation powered by a cheaper, cleaner, homegrown fuel: compressed natural gas.”
Summit Utilities, a natural gas provider to many communities in southwest Oklahoma, has a renewable development arm, Peaks Renewables, that specializes in developing RNG and other low-carbon fuels. Peaks works with communities, farmers, and other partners to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and create access to clean energy.
Summit serves Lawton, Elgin, Fletcher, Sterling, Cache, Geronimo, Altus, Apache, Blair, Burns Flat, Chickasha, Comanche, Duke, Duncan, Mangum, Marlow, Martha, Olustee and Temple.
In related matters:
• Two new cells under construction at the landfill are projected to be finished in December, Mansell said. The new cells, #6 and #7, will be individual waste-holding units inside the overall landfill, and each cell will encompass approximately 9.6 acres, Gatlin said.
The City Council approved a contract in May to excavate the two cells at the landfill. The council awarded a $3.84 million contract to 4x Construction Group of Mansfield, Texas, the lowest of four bidders for the job.
The City of Lawton owns 760 acres for solid waste disposal, Gatlin told Southwest Ledger. The landfill occupies 243 of those acres and the remainder are for expansion, she said.
• Litter abatement efforts continue along 11th Street leading to the landfill.
• City employees reported almost total compliance with the municipal ordinance requiring trucks and trailers hauling debris to the landfill to be covered with tarps.
An ordinance decrees, “No person shall operate on any roadway within the City of Lawton any vehicle with any load of refuse … unless said load is secured and covered so as to prevent the blowing, falling, leaking, or escaping of any portion of said load from the vehicle and becoming a hazard to other users of the roadway or a nuisance to the community. All loads of refuse transported to the landfill that are not properly secured and covered or are otherwise in violation of this section will be assessed additional charges…”
• In Fiscal Year 2024 the city’s Solid Waste Division picked up 6.7 million pounds of residential bulk waste, which constituted 13% of Lawton’s residential landfill waste.