Methane-eating mulch to cut emissions at 14 old underground landfills in Hudson Valley

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Fourteen Hudson Valley communities are about to be on the forefront of the fight against climate change. They have been awarded $3 million in federal grants for filters to reduce harmful gas emissions out of old, decommissioned landfills. The new, cutting-edge technology is basically dirt with some very special abilities. North East Town Supervisor Chris Kennan and a group of local climate activists are trying to keep a defunct, buried landfill from belching methane gas through the venting hooks above. Kennan said 93% of emissions produced by the town government are coming from the landfill. Experts with the Environmental Protection Agency said methane is 30 times more harmful to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. "You look at the closed landfill and it looks very quiet," Kennan said, "but when we did the research we found out that that there's a lot of methane." North East and 13 other Hudson Valley municipalities sought and won grants through the EPA to install biofilters at their closed landfills. The filters are essentially piles of mulch containing methane-eating bacteria. The plan is to use the mulch to raise the ground level beneath the candy cane-like vents to the end of the vent, sending the emissions into the mulch. Municipal leaders at a press conference Friday near a buried Wappinger cemetery said their goal is not to immediately improve air quality locally but to set an example for how to fight climate change for the long term. Local environmental advocates and the EPA representatives said that scaling up methane biofiltration would significantly reduce emissions and buy time for the planet. "Expanded across the region and applied even across the state -- That is the hope, because it is such a low-cost, simple technology," Carla Castillo of environmental advocacy group Hudson Valley Regional Council said. "It's also one of those things like with the Town of Northeast, 'Can it be replicated other places?,' EPA regional director Lisa Garcia said. "So it drives other municipalities." Garcia said the filters will be installed in the next year. The EPA is also helping municipalities fund clean energy projects – including solar farms – at the landfill sites once the filters are in place. "