I had been holding into this article I wrote for a while now, looking for the right place to share it, and it was recommended that I share it here.
I had written it to post on [email protected], but this isn’t really the vibe I try to curate over there, so I had removed it. I’ve seen talk recently about methane flaring on Mander, so I wanted to finally share this.
Thankfully since I’ve written this, there seems to be proposals by the current administration in the US to reduce or eliminate flaring, which I still need to read more about.
I hope you take the time to read this and can encourage your legislators to follow up on getting this regulated to protect humans and animals affected by this practice.
The following is about an unpleasant topic that I was unaware of until this week. It concerns landfills, which is not a glamourous topic to discuss, but we need to be aware of problems if we are to get them fixed. Due to new climate change regulations of the last few years, a new concern has come about in regard to keeping wildlife safe as we try to control greenhouse gas emissions.
I have avoided including anything graphic so you can all be made aware of what is happening without being forced to look at something you wouldn’t want to see, but some of the links do contain both great information, but also contain photos of the injuries that occur from this new danger. At the end of the post, I list some articles that do not contain any potentially disturbing images, but still provide expanded information on this subject.
Global warming has been the focus of much regulation in recent years. Methane constitutes about 12% of US greenhouse gas emissions, as opposed to the 80% that is carbon dioxide, but the impact of methane is greater than carbon dioxide due to the density of the molecules. Methane will hold onto 28 times as much heat in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. There are a variety of manmade and natural sources of methane emissions, but today we will examine the 15% that is from landfills. Methane is colorless, odorless, and burns with a flame not typically visible in daylight.
The Clean Air Act requires landfills to reduce methane emissions from landfill gas, also known as LFG. There are typically 3 options that can be used. LFG can be collected and processed to use for energy generation production. It can also be cleaned and then sold for other purposes. Most facilities do not generate enough LFG to make this a profitable venture, so the final method of methane reduction is more commonly used: flaring.
Flaring may not make sense at first. By burning methane, carbon dioxide is created. The thought is that by burning the methane, the resultant carbon dioxide is still less damaging than would be from venting the methane itself. Harm reduction is still positive, but it takes us to the point of this post.
By having a 1800F/1000C invisible flame coming from a tall tree-like structure next to a large open space that provides food to rodents, this creates a huge danger to raptors. Large numbers of birds of prey are being incinerated, either going to perch atop the tower, or by pursuing game or defending territory and passing through the flames. The primary victims of flaring are Red Tailed Hawks and Great Horned Owls.
Bald eagles, kestrels, merlins, and other birds have been documented to have been injured or killed by the flaring. Researchers estimate the number to be higher than the data suggests, due to injured birds flying or running away after receiving injuries. Smaller birds may just become completely incinerated by the extreme heat.
One the raptors, damage can be very extensive. The amount of feather damaged received could take 1-2 years to regrow, if new feather growth is possible. Damage to the follicles that regrow feathers and the burning of the skin itself can prevent feathers from ever regrowing. When some birds only have a lifespan of a few years to begin with, decisions need to be made weighing the outcome of rehabilitation vs euthanasia.
NJ Spotlight News - NJ Landfill Burning Kestrels
NJ Story on Methane Flare Hawk Injuries
The issue has been widely discussed in New Jersey as reports have come out about the horrific injuries to the wildlife. There are no legal requirements for any animal safety measures to be installed. That is not to say they do not exist. There are also systems available that use an enclosed flame. Safety cages have been installed on some open flame systems. US Fish and Wildlife was contacted to try to come up with safety measures, and as there was nothing currently existing to solve this problem, the following article goes into how they developed a solution.
Article about flare cage construction
Landfills do take actions to keep wildlife away for a number of reasons, which can include the safety of the animals. I did find this industry article about how they try to deter wildlife from building their homes in and near the landfills.
Bird Control Best Practices for Landfills
The linked articles are all very informative, but also contain some pretty graphic pictures. If you want to read more, but avoid that, I’d recommend sticking to the 2 here:
This is the EPA intro to Landfill Gas and is just basic info to familiarize yourself with LFG, where it comes from, and some nice charts about gas emissions.
This is the story of the safety cage construction. This article is largely positive in tone compared to most of the others, and focuses mainly on solutions instead of the problem part of things. It does have one photo of a Kestrel with a burned tail and wings. It is not a pleasant picture, but it is about as mild as can convey the serious damage that can occur from a flaring injury. If you can handle that, this article is definitely recommended reading.
Nat Geo Article on Methane Flares NatGeo Article, mostly focused on the work by The Raptor Trust in New Jersey. (A great place to visit, by the way!) It says there’s an injured bird pic in this, but it doesn’t load for me on the linked Archive.org post.
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Great write-up!
It’s super important that we add methane flaring wherever we can but it seems like minimal extra effort to save the birds from this kind of hazard.
Thank you!
I tried to keep it impartial while writing it, because it does seem to be an attempt to do something intended as a harm reduction measure, but there were some oversights in the implementation. Progressive improvements are a good thing, but until very recently I’d never even heard of flaring even though I’m in a big state for natural gas. I came across a hawk having its feathers grafted (called “imping”) that taught me this was a thing and how dangerous it is to raptors especially.
Here’s a post on imping with comments from someone who has done it themself if you’d like to learn about that. It’s like temporary prosthesis for birds!
A few corrections so your message doesn’t get picked apart by people arguing in bad faith:
You confused methane and methanol. Methanol is an alcohol that burns invisibly, methane is the main component of natural gas, the same that burns blue in gas stoves. Hard to see in broad daylight, but birds have much better vision than us. So why would they burn themselves? The burn happens at the base of the wide part of the flare, hiding it from view. The superheated column of coming out the stack is more than hot enough to cause the injuries, though.
In the end, the best thing we could do is twofold:
- follow the 3Rs: reduce consumption to reduce trash generation, reuse and recycle to further reduce waste.
- tax incentivize energy reuse of LFG.
Thank you for catching the mistake with the methanol. I’ve removed that video link.
I’d be curious to know more about what the birds see. They could also be landing on stacks after they finish flaring. That would still be extremely hot, or if they’re sitting there when the flare ignites.
It looks like there are new rules coming into effect now, as rules for flaring have been updated after 40 years.
From PBS Newshour
The action follows a more comprehensive methane-reduction plan announced by the Environmental Protection Agency in December. The plan, announced at a global climate conference in the United Arab Emirates, targets emissions from existing oil and gas wells nationwide, rather than focusing only on new wells, as previous EPA regulations have done. It also regulates smaller wells that are now required to find and plug methane leaks.
It seems they are using the stick instead of the carrot to stop the venting as much as possible on new and existing sources.
The article says between 2010 and 2020, enough gas was wasted this way to power 675,000 homes.
I’m encouraged also by articles I’ve been seeing calling for producers of waste (plastic bottles, packaging, etc) to be now responsible for doing something with it instead of the responsibility being placed on consumers.
I’d love to see more reusable containers, like glass, but I get there are a number of issues with that, so maybe better quality aluminum containers.
No problem!
I don’t know much about landfill flares, but I wouldn’t think they’d flare up high like the post picture.
Industrial flares need to be designed for the maximum load they could face, usually an emergency situation like an unplanned shutdown. In those scenarios, the flame goes up and burns out like the picture, and burns yellow due to lack of sufficient air.
Landfill continuously generate a low pressure, low flow stream of methane and other gases. The only way they’d flare up and down is if they are storing the gases then releasing. Which… why? Maybe there’s a reason for it, but I don’t see it.
I’m glad the EPA is finally doing something. The lack of environmental regulation in the US is near criminal. And you have to listen to temporarily vexed industrialists complain about the regulations that do exist.
