The Hidden Threat Facing Colorado’s Kids

Kim Finlay, Director of Research and Analytics

Parents already have enough to worry about this back-to-school season — safety, mental health, academic pressure. What most don’t know is that thousands of Colorado children are attending schools just miles from landfills that are actively leaking methane and toxic air pollutants. Our analysis breaks down some of the most at-risk schools, with some landfills in close proximity to nearly two dozen schools.

  • Sedalia Elementary School, located south of Denver and serving 410 students, is just 1.01 miles away from the nearest landfill – the most at-risk school in the state. 

  • Nine pre-k, elementary, and middle schools, with student populations over 3,500 students, sit within three miles of County Line Landfill in Littleton, with two schools within 1.5 miles of the facility. 

  • The York & SH Landfill in Adams County sits within five miles of 22 schools – the most in the state.

Even long after they’re closed, landfills regularly emit a mix of hazardous pollutants such as volatile organic compounds, benzene, and even leachate. This pollution contributes to smog formation, can trigger asthma attacks, and contaminate local waterways, compounding health risks for nearby communities. The impacts are especially dangerous for young children, whose bodies are more vulnerable to both air and water pollution.

Explore our interactive map to see which Colorado schools face the biggest hidden threat of landfill pollution, and learn more about landfills in Colorado here.

Landfill Locations and Information

This map uses multiple public data sources to identify and characterize solid waste landfill sites in the United States.

Spatial location data for schools and other educational facilities comes from the OpenStreetMap Education Places feature layer in the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World (Item ID: f6adcf5dcb8244258db5cb421a7f3a97). This dataset provides nationwide point locations of primary and secondary schools, colleges, universities, and other education-related places as contributed by the OpenStreetMap community. The version used in this analysis was last updated in late 2023 and published online in early 2024. In this project, these education facility points were used as the “input features” in spatial proximity calculations measuring distance to the nearest permitted landfill, enabling consistent identification of all schools located within five miles of any solid waste disposal site.

Data is sourced from https://services6.arcgis.com/Do88DoK2xjTUCXd1/arcgis/rest/services/OSM_NA_Educational/FeatureServer   

Facility attribute and operational data were drawn from the MSW Landfill Tracker, which is compiled using the latest available data from the following public sources:

  • EPA Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP), October 2024 release

  • EPA Landfill Methane Outreach Program (LMOP), September 2024 release


These sources provide detailed information on landfill waste-in-place estimates, gas collection system status, emissions reporting, and facility characteristics. This combined approach ensures both accurate geographic representation and robust facility-level data for analysis of potential environmental and public health impacts.