Moving Forward Archive

St. Landry Parish is a national leader in capturing a stinky gas that leaches from landfills and using it to power cars and trucks. Before too long the gas will be easily available to every local driver who wants to use it.

Not only will that provide a cleaner,  cheaper fuel for your car, it will mean that harmful gases that once flowed into the atmosphere will be captured and put to good use—part of an innovative  good news cycle at the St. Landry landfill near Beggs, according to Katry Martin, executive director of the St. Landry Parish Solid Waste District.

There are still a few things to be done, but here’s how the St. Landry cycle will work, and pretty soon:  Sanitation trucks bring garbage to the landfill. There, as the garbage begins to rot, it produces methane, a very powerful greenhouse gas but one that is also the main ingredient in natural gas. That methane is 

captured at the landfill and processed for use as fuel for the trucks that bring the trash to the site in the first place. They go out and gather more trash, and the cycle continues.

“The fact that the hauler that delivers waste to the parish landfill will fuel its trucks with the biogas generated from the landfill is a true example of the power of renewable energy sources and a preview of the future of biogas,” Martin said.

The St. Landry Solid Waste District has been capturing, processing, and selling natural gas since 2012. The sheriff’s department is one of the biggest users, and the waste district uses the natural gas to fuel its own vehicles. Now, Progressive Waste Solutions, the firm that provides pickup service to St. Landry Parish has plans to replace its aging, diesel-fueled fleet with those powered by natural gas from the Beggs landfill.

That’s prompted the Solid Waste District to expand its landfill-to-fuel operation. That will allow the landfill and its partner Cornerstone Environmental Partners to make the natural gas available to the general public at a fueling station, probably on U.S. 190, that will be the first of its kind in the nation.

Martin hopes the expansion at the landfill will be completed by early fall, and the consumer outlet will open next summer. Users must now go to the landfill, about 15 miles north of Opelousas, to get the fuel. Martin says bringing the fuel closer to most consumers will benefit everyone.

“It’s difficult to attract users without a means to provide convenient access to the fuel,” Martin said. In addition, the fueling outlet will make the natural gas more accessible to current users, he said.

“The sheriff’s department continues to use CNG [compressed natural gas], and it’s dispensed here at the landfill,” he said. “They would likely increase consumption or expand their fleet if it were made available at a more convenient location.”

According to Martin, the price at the pump for the gas will likely range from $1.85 to $2.25 for the equivalent of a gallon of diesel. The user will have to modify the vehicle to use natural gas, but Martin said the cost of that investment will be covered over several years by lower fuel costs.

The St. Landry system was developed by BioCNG, LLC, inventor of a biogas conditioning system that economically produces fuel to power compressed natural gas vehicles.

The St. Landry Parish project was cited by the federal Environmental Protection Agency in 2012 with its Project of the Year Award given as part of the agency’s Landfill Methane Outreach Program