This week, the Air Resources Board (ARB) held a hearing on the Proposed Short-Lived Climate Pollutant (SLCP) Reduction Strategy (Draft Strategy).  SLCPs include black carbon, methane, and fluorinated gases.  The relative potency of how they heat the atmosphere is many times greater than carbon dioxide, and has a stronger impact in the near term.  Therefore, reducing these emissions can have an immediate impact on climate change.   The First Update to the Climate Change Scoping Plan recommended ARB develop the Proposed Strategy, and Senate Bill 605 (Lara; 2014) requires ARB, in coordination with other state agencies and local air districts, to develop a strategy to reduce SLCP emissions.   

RCRC staff attended the hearing and focused comments on the methane recommendations, specifically dealing with the organics diversion from landfills.  Assembly Bill 1826 (Chesbro; 2014) already mandates the diversion of organics from landfills that will be phased-in to provide time to construct the extra infrastructure necessary to process the diverted organics, with a goal of 50 percent diversion by 2020.  Implementation began in April 2016 for those businesses generating the most organic waste (4 cubic yards of commercial solid waste per week), and will add more businesses in 2017 that generate smaller amounts of organic waste (2 cubic yards of commercial solid waste per week), and then in 2019 will add more businesses with even smaller amounts of organic waste (1 cubic yard of commercial solid waste per week). 

The Proposed Strategy has recommended a 90 percent organics diversion goal by 2025, which is basically a ban of organics in landfills.  RCRC staff is part of a coalition, including public and private sector solid waste industry representatives, that has been trying to educate ARB staff and the ARB Board that this is unachievable.  CalRecycle has indicated that in order to reach a 50 percent diversion goal, it will necessitate an additional 100 new or expanded anaerobic digestion and composting facilities to process the additional organics being diverted.  RCRC staff and the coalition testified that trying to reach 90 percent by 2025 is simply unachievable given the financing, permitting, and marketing challenges. 

While the Board directed the ARB staff to further investigate RCRC concerns, most Board members expressed their opinion that the 90 percent organic diversion goal was necessary to meet the ultimate Assembly Bill 32 greenhouse gas reduction goal.  The coalition will continue to work with ARB staff in the months to come before the final Strategy is released for adoption.