Dear C4FA Supporters,
Welcome to our first email blast of 2023, and it’s starting off to be quite a year.
Some background – The Palomar Airport property contains three very old county closed “landfills” – a term we use lightly as the landfills are old-fashioned garbage dumps, opened before environmental safeguards were taken. For years, the County, its businesses and its residents apparently dumped everything under the sun at the Palomar Airport County dumps. In those days, there were no landfill linings, no health and safety or environmental precautions taken, and no record of what’s in the landfills.
According to the San Diego Water Board: “Landfills by nature pose a significant risk to human health and the environment, especially the older, unlined landfills.”
The rotting of landfill waste produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas, which is collected by a Landfill Gas (LFG) Collection system and burned off at its flare station. This collection and burn off system was installed many years ago. The flare station is in the Airport parking lot. You can drive by and see the flames from the burning methane gas.
Although the San Diego County of the Department of Public Works (DPW) has only mentioned one 2008 landfill fire in their meetings with C4FA, reliable sources have told us there have been multiple subsurface methane fires from these old garbage dumps on the Palomar Airport property over the years, some lasting for months on end. Confirmation is needed.
“Palomar Airport Landfill (Palomar) is an inactive municipal solid waste landfill. It is equipped with a landfill gas (LFG) collection system and a flare station. The facility operates under San Diego County Air Pollution Control District (SDAPCD) Permit to Operate (PTO) No. 910733.”
In October 2022, the Palomar Airport landfill gas (LFG)-fired flare automatically shut down due to high oxygen content above the limit. After trouble shooting, DPW discovered possible “subsurface oxidation” and “oxygen intrusion” events. What these terms mean is unclear to us, and we are continuing to push for clarity and transparency from DPW. It was reported that there was damage to some of the components of the methane gas collection system.
Since then, DPW has been performing excavation and repair work of the Landfill Gas Collection system, as well as investigating the system for oxygen intrusion, weather permitting.
At the time of discovery, DPW petitioned the San Diego County Air Pollution Control District (APCD) Hearing Board for an emergency variance to operate the flare (burn off system) with elevated oxygen levels. The variance also gives DPW relief from several district rules that protect public health and safety. According to DPW:
“As a result, County cannot operate the GCCS in such a way to meet permit conditions No. 8 at the flare that operates for the entire site, and permit condition 7 and Rule 59(c)(3) in Unit 3, as our investigations and remedial actions are occurring throughout Unit 3. Surface emissions in excess of 500 ppm may occur due to the non-operation of the GCCS to a limited portion of Unit 3 and while the GCCS is operational, the flare may exceed the 3.5 percent (%) oxygen limit. However, we believe that operating the flare is necessary to control surface emissions and maintain compliance for perimeter migration probes while troubleshooting the source of the oxygen intrusion, which results in greater than 3.5% oxygen at the flare.”
There’s a whole lot of government technical speak here, and C4FA is in the process of continuing to push for transparency, with clear and specific explanations to the public from the County of what is happening at Palomar Airport and what exactly is being done about it. More to come. Stay tuned.
Your Friends and Neighbors at Citizens for a Friendly Airport
