Can Miami-Dade find gold by processing methane gas?

As Miami-Dade County commissioners wrestle with a broad range of solid waste issues, they are to vote this week on seeking a detailed look at their options to extract methane gas from existing and future landfills, with the thought that the gas might contain economic gold.

The resolution was heard without a vote in the county’s Committee of the Whole meeting Jan. 28 as commissioners broadened the measure to ask Mayor Daniella Levine Cava to report in 90 days not only on methane in county landfills but on other landfill facilities and projects in the state.

“Other folks are doing it,” Commissioner Raquel Regalado told commissioners in January in support of her resolution to sniff out methane opportunities. She said the measure is to study a piece of a portfolio of solid waste options that the county can consider as it digs out of its current garbage crisis caused when the county’s waste-to-energy plant burned two years ago this month.

The measure says the county processes or disposes of 2.4 million tons of solid waste annually, both from county collections and from 15 municipalities that have long-term waste disposal contract with the county.

The measure explains that landfill gas is a byproduct of the decomposition of organic materials in landfills, of which about half of the gas is methane, which is a potent greenhouse gas. But landfill gas can be captured and converted into a source of renewable energy.

That gas capture, the legislation says, can generate revenue for the county while reducing the odors and hazards of landfill gas and preventing methane from contributing to smog and global climate change.

The legislation asks the mayor to evaluate legally viable options from all present and future county landfills.

The county would not be taking its first look at methane gas recovery. Commissioners 27 years ago voted to study the feasibility of recovering methane gas from the Northwest 58th Street Landfill to supplement the generation of electricity at the resource recovery facility in Doral that later burned and has yet to be replaced as the county turns to more landfill uses.

In 2021 the county approved construction of a South Dade Landfill gas system expansion that included installation of landfill gas components such as gas extraction wells, header pipes, lateral pipes, control values, drains and a blower flare station.

Methane gas extraction involves drilling a series of wells into a landfill and using a blower to pull the gas from the waste and pipe it to a location to either flare it off to destroy it or use it as an energy source.

The vertical pipes are bored deep into the landfill to capture the methane. The blower then sucks the gas from the wells through the piping network, where it can be cleaned and processed to then generate electricity through combustion in a generator. Gas not used for energy can be flared off to burn, thus destroying the methane before it reaches the atmosphere.

If the commission approves the resolution, Mayor Levine Cava would be given 90 to report to commissioners how the county could achieve and make money from the gas extraction from county landfills and also to evaluate other projects such as the Medley Landfill methane gas projects and the Nopetro company plant in Vero Beach.

The detailed report would have to pinpoint permitting time and agencies involved in accomplishing the project, the capital costs, the costs of operations and maintenance, and the increased costs the county would charge per ton for solid waste processing for municipalities and the county’s unincorporated municipal service area.

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