Sources of Local GHG's

The EPA just released an interactive tool which provides the public the opportunity to search and locate greenhouse gas emitters based on facility, type of factory, amount and type of greenhouse gas, along with the facility location, plant name, and other locations. Found under the EPA's Toxic Release Inventory, which compiles information from thousands of companies, including emissions to air, land, and water of more than 650 toxic chemicals. The tool, while still in it's early stages of development, provides data through 2010 and is intended to educate both the local communities, as well as factory owners and operators, of the emissions and hopefully encourage reduction.

Being curious as to what sources of emissions could be found in and around San Diego County, I performed a search and was surprised by the results. The second largest source of GHG emissions, (263,932) was the West Miramar Sanitary Landfill, all of which were related to methane generation. Having toured the facility and listened to the manager boast of how they were considered a 'five star landfill,' particularly due to their methane harnessing abilities, I automatically assumed that they were harnessing all of the methane gas that the landfill was generating. To my surprise however, the statistics showed that a little over 1/3 of the methane gas emitted was unable to be harnessed, and is in fact emitted into the atmosphere.