By: Shaina Oliver, Colorado Field Organizer, Moms Clean Air Force and EcoMadres
Date: December 18, 2024
About: Landfill Methane Rulemaking
To: Air Pollution Control Division
Thank you for taking time and consideration of our comments today.
I’m Shaina Oliver, field organizer for Moms Clean Air Force-EcoMadres Colorado Chapter, a national organization of over 1.5 million moms, dads, and caregivers united for children’s health and their right to breathe clean air.
Importantly, I am a mother of four, a family of six and we are the survivors and descendants of the genocide known as the Indian Removal Act known to the Dine as The Long Walk of the Navajo. With the history of over 574 Tribal Nations of the United States who had the right to live and breathe on the land of the free, Indigenous Peoples never left toxic waste like we do today. Tribes had a history of being able to drink from any flow of water and breathing easily throughout their lives.
It is imperative for accountability and enforcement processes to happen from leadership of the Colorado Dept. of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) to maintain and divert organic waste from landfills to further address methane emissions from landfills. Plus, we need regulatory measures for producers to prevent consumer toxic hazardous products from entering landfills to further reduce toxic contamination to air and water quality. Communities most vulnerable should not have to bear the burden of toxic emissions.
To further reduce climate pollutants and contamination we need CDPHE to lower the gas collection and control system (GCCS) installation thresholds to cover all MSW landfills with 200,000 metric tons of waste in place and require installations and expansions to happen within a year. And to absolutely phase out open flares and ensure gas destruction devices are met with high standards of efficiency (99%). Ensuring robust monitoring is routine of at least monthly with transparency of air and water quality reports that can be readily readable and available to public records. CDPHE please do consider requiring use of bio-covers to ensure effective processes of containing emissions.
Colorado’s most vulnerable communities deserve to have sensible and attainable strengthened emission standards that will protect our air and water quality. Our parents, communities, workers, and importantly our children are counting on your leadership to steer us in the right direction for communities today and our future generations who will be looking back at how we solve our issues of today. Thank you.