The Bay Area Air District Hearing Board has ordered Newby Island Landfill to significantly increase air monitoring, reduce emissions and take major steps to cut the odors that have plagued Milpitas and northern San Jose for years. The order comes after regulators found the 342-acre facility was improperly measuring its hydrogen sulfide emissions, a lapse that caused years of underreporting on one of the gases most responsible for the landfill’s rotten-egg stench.
Milpitas resident Malgorzata Sorys described the smell as sour and like rotten eggs or spoiled food, adding that it is worst on hot days and when the wind is blowing, according to The Press Democrat. Milpitas residents have filed 9,635 odor complaints about the landfill since 2015, per the Bay Area Air District, with pungent smells reported wafting through suburbs, parks, businesses and schools. The landfill received its highest number of odor complaints in 2016, though complaints had trended lower in more recent years, the outlet reports.
Under the order, Newby Island Landfill must build fence-line monitors to measure air emissions and install a continuous emissions monitoring system that will provide real-time hydrogen sulfide data, replacing a system that measured emissions just four times a year. The facility must also automate its landfill gas collection system to monitor and adjust gas wells for compliance with health standards, and regularly survey the property with drones to detect methane emissions. The air district has set deadlines over the next two years for installation of the required systems.
A Decade of Violations and Underreporting
The abatement order draws on a long record of documented problems at the site. Air-quality violations occurred between 2014 and 2020, including landfill gas surface leaks from composting operations in 2014 and 2015 and shutdowns of the gas collection system in 2019. Regulators also cited public nuisance violations tied to odor complaints between 2014 and 2016. In 2022, Newby Island Landfill agreed to pay $210,000 to settle 30 air-quality regulation violations, and the air district’s enforcement division is now investigating additional violations that have occurred since that settlement, according to the same report…