A Kansas landfill just demonstrated why landfill monitoring standards need an upgrade

When federal regulators required a Kansas landfill to adopt advanced monitoring technology, the results were immediate, measurable, and positive.

Here’s the backstory: In late 2023, the U.S. EPA announced that Hamm Inc., the operator of a municipal landfill in Lawrence, Kansas, would pay a civil penalty and invest approximately $30,000 in advanced methane monitoring technologies to resolve alleged Clean Air Act violations. This settlement was the first to involve the use of drones for monitoring methane at the surface of a landfill, marking an exciting milestone for this burgeoning industry. 

We wanted to know the result of using these technologies, so Full Circle Future requested records from the EPA through a Freedom of Information Act request. The impact was immediately clear. 

Reports from the engineering firm hired by the landfill to execute the monitoring show that the Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) monitoring program quickly identified multiple areas of erosion and soil loss across the landfill's cover system — areas where methane can easily escape. Those areas were then inspected, repaired, regraded, and reseeded by landfill staff. Continued monitoring showed a marked difference: methane emissions at the repaired areas remained under control. To quote the report:

“The LiDAR system, using state-of-art technology, identified cover areas with potential erosion and soil loss that could not be readily detected using standards methods. This system also allowed Hamm to identify and repair areas lacking suitable cover integrity, enhancing the facility’s ability to reduce methane emissions.” (page 3-6).

The LiDAR technology did exactly what it was intended to do: identify potential problems before they became larger and costlier ones, all at a reasonable price point of just $13,000.  

Today, state regulations do not require landfills to use effective monitoring technologies such as drones, LiDAR, and fenceline monitoring systems. Federal landfill methane regulations were last substantially updated in 2016, before many of today's advanced monitoring technologies became widely available. As a result, much of the nation's landfill monitoring framework still relies on periodic inspections and manual surface emissions monitoring techniques developed decades ago. Meanwhile, the technology has evolved dramatically.

Drones, remote sensing, continuous monitoring systems, advanced methane sensors, and LiDAR mapping are readily available technologies for landfill operators to identify leaks, erosion, settlement issues, and cover failures with a level of precision that was previously impossible.  Yet regulations continue to treat these approaches as optional enhancements rather than standard practice.

Better monitoring leads to earlier detection, faster repairs, and fewer methane releases. Policymakers should update their regulatory frameworks to encourage their use. The technology exists. The benefits are increasingly clear. The Lawrence landfill has now provided another example of what happens when modern monitoring is actually put to work.