Landfill donates CNG vehicle

Keeping Opelousas and the parish clean will get a little cheaper because of two donated vehicles from the St. Landry Parish Solid Waste Disposal District.

The trucks aren’t new, but they include a new, environmentally friendly and cost-effective option — they are powered by compressed natural gas, or CNG.

That fuel comes at a discount because it is a byproduct of the parish landfill in the Beggs community.

Solid Waste is converting waste methane captured from its landfill into CNG equal to about 250 gallons of gasoline a day. District officials say more capacity is possible.

“We have not maximized our use yet. We have room to increase our production at least two fold,” said Katry Martin, the district’s executive director.

The St. Landry Parish Sheriff’s Office powers some of its vehicles with the recovered bio-gas. The landfill also runs most of its vehicles on CNG.

Solid Waste board member Cyrus Auzenne said the district wanted to donate these vehicles so it could encourage others to give CNG a try.

“I asked for one of those trucks for Opelousas,” Auzenne said. “I think it will help the city get a feel for these vehicles.”

The trucks get about 250 miles per tank and the performance is equal to traditionally powered vehicles.

The bio-gas costs about $1.85 per gasoline gallon equivalent. That could mean a significant savings for a fleet operator.

The real winner, advocates say, is the environment.

The project helps remove dangerous methane from the environment and saves money for users of the resulting bio-fuel.

Methane is a natural part of the decomposition of landfill waste. Scientists call that gas a powerful contributor to climate change.

“Bio-gas as a vehicle fuel reduces carbon emission by 90 percent compared to diesel. That is greater than any other vehicle fuel available,” Martin said.

The local landfill installed a collection system for the waste gas years ago to keep it from escaping into the environment. At first, the district simply flared it off.

But in 2012 the district partnered with BioCNG to construct a plant that cleaned and compressed the gas and converted it into a form that can fuel vehicles.

That option — available for years at some of the nation’s largest landfills — required a plant similar in size to a large refinery.

The design of the BioCNG plant is the first that can provide such an option at a reasonable cost to smaller landfills. St. Landry Parish’s landfill was the first in the state and one of the first in the nation to adopt the technology.

The local project was honored with the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s Landfill Methane Outreach Program’s Project of the Year award and the state’s pollution prevention award in 2013.

The only real drawback at the moment is that the landfill includes the only CNG fueling station in the parish, so trucks risk running on empty.

“But if you do run out, they can run on traditional gasoline,” said Auzenne, who added that all the vehicle are outfitted to run on either CNG or regular gas.

For the two donated trucks, that should not be a problem. The parish and the city will use them for trash and litter control. Because they collect garbage, the landfill is their daily destination.

Executive director Katry Martin said that after a few years’ experience with CNG vehicles, his agency is convinced they are the way to go.

To underscore that, he said, Solid Waste is purchasing 10 more CNG vehicles, including a 2.5-ton truck.

“That is a medium-sized truck at we will use to handle recyclables,” Martin said. “It is the largest as well as one of the first of its kind in the region.”