Pressure mounts on methane-polluting Oregon landfill to clean up its act

Coffin Butte, a rapidly growing landfill in Oregon that is leaking explosive levels of methane, has caught the attention of state and federal officials. On August 8, Oregon’s U.S. senators, Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, and one of its U.S. House members, Val Hoyle, wrote a letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency urging it to step up an ongoing investigation of the site.

The legislators’ letter is the result of years of advocacy by residents of Benton County, where Coffin Butte is located. Over the past decade, they’ve watched the landfill grow in size as the amount of trash arriving there has doubled. Then, in 2022, an EPA inspection found 21 spots on the landfill where methane emissions exceeded 10,000 parts per million (ppm) — far over the federal limit of 500 ppm. Residents are concerned about the climate impacts of these emissions, the risk of wildfires posed by this highly flammable gas, and the health effects of exposure to toxic chemicals emitted alongside methane.

Merkley first learned about Coffin Butte Landfill at a town hall this February, where residents spoke about the landfill’s effects on their day-to-day lives and how its emissions contribute to climate change (methane is a potent greenhouse gas that over 20 years traps 80 times as much heat in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide).

“Certainly, their concerns resonated with me, their concerns about fires, about the smell, and concerns about their health,” Merkley told Canary Media. At a May hearing, the senator raised the issue with EPA Administrator Michael Regan. In response, Regan said he couldn’t comment because Coffin Butte is the subject of an ​“active enforcement situation,” but he assured Merkley that the EPA is ​“laser-focused” on the landfill. In June, the EPA conducted a second inspection of Coffin Butte Landfill, the results of which are forthcoming.

Republic Services, the company that operates Coffin Butte, ​“has had a lot of time to become a good community member and address all of this methane leakage. And now we’re going to find out in this new report whether or not they have done so,” Merkley said.

Meanwhile, Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality has issued warnings to Republic Services for not complying with 2021 state regulations mandating that landfills reduce methane emissions. The regulations required Republic Services to conduct emissions testing at two flares by March 2023. In July, the DEQ concluded that the testing was not ​“completed or attempted” and that Republic Services committed a Class I violation — the most serious level — of the requirement.

Local advocacy has focused largely on a proposed landfill expansion that would add a second, 270-foot-tall pile of trash across the road from the original site. Republic Services initially filed an application for an even larger expansion in 2021, but that application was denied due to residents’ concerns. A second application for a scaled-down expansion was filed on July 19, but on Friday it was deemed incomplete by Benton County. Republic Services has 180 days to refile.

The recent attention from state and federal officials, as well as increased media coverage, has bolstered the movement against the expansion, said Debbie Palmer, a resident of Benton County who lives 4 miles down the road from Coffin Butte. Environmental nonprofit Beyond Toxics and local advocacy group Valley Neighbors for Environmental Quality and Safety recently held a meeting to discuss the landfill. More than 100 people attended. ​“It was standing room only,” Palmer said.

Coffin Butte isn’t an anomaly among landfills. An Industrious Labs analysis published in May found that across eight states, 96 percent of EPA landfill inspections reported methane levels higher than federal standards. ​“It’s a real example of what we’re finding in landfill after landfill,” Merkley said.

Over the past two years, Merkley has secured $5 million in federal funding to study methane emissions from landfills. Earlier this summer, he submitted an appropriations request to fund a pilot program that would continuously monitor methane at one landfill in the United States. The 2025 appropriations bill for the EPA and Interior Department, which includes funding for the program, passed the Senate on July 25. While the EPA would have the power to decide which landfill the pilot would monitor, Coffin Butte would be a good candidate, Merkley said.

For now, residents and government authorities are waiting on the results of the June EPA inspection.

“If the problem persists, I’m going to be very much following up on the EPA’s regulatory authorities and asking them to use those authorities to protect the community and the environment,” Merkley said.