Also, Dutchess awarded silver Climate Smart certification
Single-engine airplanes and monarch butterflies flew overhead as local and federal officials gathered in a field between the Hudson Valley Regional Airport and an array of solar panels on Sept. 13 to celebrate a $3 million federal grant awarded to Beacon, Philipstown and 12 other municipalities.
The primary purpose of the grant, funded by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, will be to install biofilters at capped landfills to reduce methane emissions that contribute to global warming. The funds also will go toward solar-panel arrays atop the closed landfills, batteries to store excess solar power and native pollinator-attracting plants to restore local ecosystems.
“What do we do with all of these legacy sites that everyone’s spinning their wheels on?” asked Lisa Garcia, the regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, as she gestured to the former landfill behind her and next to the runways. “We can’t build a park on it.”
As trash rots in a capped landfill, it creates methane that is vented from candy-cane-shaped, plastic pipes. Methane is 28 times more effective than carbon dioxide at trapping atmospheric heat. In Beacon, the capped landfill next to the transfer station is responsible for more than 60 percent of the city’s emissions; for the Town of North East, it is 93 percent. “We were stunned,” said its supervisor, Christopher Kennan.
The filters, which the EPA hopes to install next year, will look like raised garden beds, filled with mulch and methane-eating bacteria. The beds will surround the candy-cane pipes, with their outlets buried. Pilot programs have found that the filters trap 95 percent of methane emissions.
Kennan noted that the EPA has calculated the economic damage caused by carbon at $190 per metric ton. Installing filters at North East’s 15-acre landfill will cost less than $20 per ton.
There are more than 1,900 inactive landfills in New York state. “It would be great if everybody could apply a simple, low-cost technology such as this,” said Carla Castillo, the executive director of the Hudson Valley Regional Council, which spearheaded the grant application.
The $3 million grant was not the only reason to celebrate. Last week, Dutchess County learned that it had been certified by the state as a silver-level Climate Smart community, one of 17 municipalities to achieve the distinction.
Among the actions that Dutchess received credit for were setting up cooling centers for extreme heat, installing LED traffic lights, purchasing renewable energy, funding local land conservation and installing demonstration rain gardens at the county’s Farm and Home Center in Millbrook. Counties and municipalities in the Climate Smart program receive priority for state grants.
Beacon was certified silver in 2020; Putnam County, Philipstown and the Village of Cold Spring are certified bronze. The state is developing criteria for a gold level.
