New law seeks to help Colorado counties comply with state landfill emission rules, avoid major spike in trash fees 

A new law signed by Colorado Gov. Jared Polis seeks to help county landfills comply with state emission-reduction requirements without having to dramatically increase trash fees. 

Senate Bill 101 allows landfill owners to apply for grant money to help pay for new methane capture and monitoring infrastructure. It was signed by Polis on May 21.

The measure came in response to concerns from rural county officials who said complying with the new mandates would mean potentially having to hike trash collection fees, commonly called tipping fees, to help cover the costs. 

“I think we have a responsibility as a state to control methane and keep our air clean and do what we can to combat climate change,” state Sen. Dylan Roberts, a Frisco Democrat and one of the bill’s lead sponsors, said during a legislative hearing in April. “The reality on the ground is that counties have to grapple with the costs of that.”

Under rules passed last year by the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission, public and private landfills that meet certain thresholds for methane emissions must install new pollutant control and monitoring systems, end open flare burning of methane and be equipped with biofilters. 

Landfills are the third-largest emitter of methane in Colorado, according to state data, and the second-largest driver of climate change after carbon dioxide. While methane has a shorter lifespan than carbon dioxide, it is also more potent, with a warming effect that is 86 times stronger than carbon dioxide over a 20–year-period, according to the Climate and Clean Air Coalition. 

The new rules go into effect in 2029, though some landfills have up to three years after that to install the emission capture and monitoring technology. 

Mountain counties with publicly-owned landfills estimate the costs of installing new equipment alone will be in the millions. In Garfield County, officials project the upfront cost of new equipment and technology could be around $2 million to $2.5 million. In Summit County, costs are projected to be around $3 million, while in Pitkin County, officials are estimating about $3.5 million.

Under the newly-signed bill, counties will be able to apply for funding from the state’s community impact cash fund, which primarily goes toward environmental projects in communities affected by air pollution. 

The bill does not stipulate how much funding will be made available from the fund for landfill projects, but it does require the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to prioritize funding for publicly-owned landfills over private ones. Last year, the fund was estimated to have around $9 million, though about $5 million was diverted to the state’s general fund for the upcoming fiscal year’s budget to help close a roughly $1 billion spending gap. 

Kelly Flenniken, executive director for Colorado Counties, Inc., a nonprofit representing all 64 of the state’s counties, said she hopes the opportunity for new state funding will help mitigate the need for local governments to raise trash fees. But she added it won’t be a complete solution.

“Some counties, depending on how big their landfill is and what the estimate was for that equipment, still may need to raise some fees,” Flenniken said, noting that counties will also be in competition with one another for funding. 

Supporters of the bill had initially hoped to go further by giving counties more leeway when it came to complying with the new methane rules. Initially, the bill would have created a waiver process for landfill owners to request more time for compliance and would have shielded landfills from penalties for noncompliance if they could show that the reason was purely due to financial inability. 

Those provisions were stripped after facing pushback from environmental groups, who felt the original bill would allow landfill owners to skirt the state’s clean air rules and could jeopardize climate goals. 

“It’s not necessarily the pinnacle solution we were hoping for, but we do feel like it will certainly offset (costs) in a tremendous way that will help Coloradans not have to pay a lot more to dispose of their trash properly,” Flenniken said of the bill’s final version. “I don’t think it solves the whole problem, but I do think it helps.”