WM opens $35M RNG facility in Arkansas

WM, Houston, has opened a $35 million renewable natural gas (RNG) facility at the company’s Eco Vista Landfill near Springdale, Arkansas.

The landfill gas-to-energy facility will use biogas generated when organic material decomposes in a landfill, WM says.

As reported by the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal (NWABJ), the Eco Vista facility spans 14,430 square feet. It is expected to recover and distribute approximately 750,000 metric million British thermal units (MMBtu) per year of RNG, which could serve the equivalent of 25,000 households annually or 650 heavy-duty vehicles. The diesel gallon equivalent is one MMBtu of gas equals 6.81 gallons of diesel.

WM will allocate a portion of the RNG for its U.S. fleet of compressed natural gas vehicles.

In a WM release announcing the project acquired by the NWABJ, Randy Beck, who heads WM’s renewable energy group, says, “The size of that little facility can provide enough gas to power a town. I think that’s pretty amazing.”

The RNG facility at Eco Vista processes the increasing volumes of biogas collected from the landfill—generated during the decomposition of organic material—into pipeline-quality gas to be delivered to Energy Transfer’s Enable Gas Transmission pipeline system.

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“Enable Pipeline was motivated and fantastic to work with,” Beck says. “All the dominoes fell in the right direction, between the state and the pipeline company, to move this project expeditiously. Northwest Arkansas is one of the country’s fastest-growing areas and is a friendly state to do business. That allows us to expedite our permitting and construction processes.”

WM officials say using RNG can avoid up to approximately 40,000 tons per year of greenhouse gas emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels.

Beck adds that construction of the facility created over 125 jobs and will initially employ four people for operations who are on-call 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

WM has plans for about 20 additional RNG projects and intends to spend about $1.2 billion on renewable energy projects between 2022 and 2026.

The Eco Vista facility is WM’s sixth RNG facility and the first in Arkansas, reports the NWABJ. In addition to Eco Vista, WM owns Arkansas landfills in Danville, North Little Rock and Pine Bluff. Beck says they are “on the radar” for possible RNG facilities, but there aren’t any immediate plans to do so.