I spent this past week in Atlanta at
SWANA’s Landfill Gas Symposium, talking with attendees and exhibitors alike
(both categories record-setting in their numbers), taking in the presentations,
and trying not to get trampled by the hordes of Southeastern Conference
(basketball) Championship fans running amok in the downtown area. I came through
unscathed, which in retrospect had some miraculous aspects, but my survival
allows me the opportunity to offer a short report on the symposium…not the
results of the tournament.As with LMOP earlier in the year
the overall mood of the event was extremely positive…and why not? Even with
energy prices back to where they were three years ago, between the expectation
of huge infusions of money for LFGTE projects from private as well as public
coffers and the entirely reasonable expectation that today’s energy prices will
prove to be ephemeral, everyone with whom I spoke looked forward eagerly to what
2009 had to offer. Well, nearly everyone.
Greg Vogt, managing director for the
International Solid Waste Association (ISWA), headquartered in Vienna, Austria,
led off the festivities with his keynote presentation titled, Trends Counter to Landfill Gas Industry
Growth, pointing out that around the globe, landfills were running into
increasingly heavy flak. It’s one thing for Western European nations—the core of
ISWA membership and concern where space is a major consideration—to oppose the
practice, but here in the US we find landfilling coming under increasing siege
by individuals and organizations of different and often contradictory
stripes.
Was Director Vogt—long a colleague
and friend of many if not most of the people in the audience—proclaiming
opposition to landfilling in general and LFGTE in particular? I think not.
Rather he was sounding a warning bell to landfill supporters who have sat back
and allowed landfill critics to demonize the practice without a fight that it’s
time to enter the fray with science-based information of their
own.
Some might not have appreciated
Vogt’s setting the event in motion on such a cautionary note, but the message
was well founded by a man whose credentials and intentions are without
question.