The Combe Fill North Landfill in Mount Olive Township, New Jersey, was a Superfund site twenty years ago. It is now North America’s largest landfill solar plant.
The 25.6-megawatt solar farm, which was finished on Friday, is only one illustration of an inventive trend that transforms places for producing sustainable energy into signs of throwaway culture.
We’re happy to have been able to collaborate closely with our dependable, long-term partners to transform yet another abandoned landfill into a facility that produces renewable energy, said Chris Ichters, executive vice president of CEP Renewables.
In spite of the fact that there are more than 10,000 closed landfills in the country, very few of these parcels have been rehabilitated. More of these waste sites being converted to solar projects would increase municipal tax revenue, employment opportunities, cleaner air, and inexpensive electricity for citizens across the nation.
According to Electrek, the New Jersey solar farm is the result of a collaboration between CEP Renewables and CS Energy, with steel skids provided by Lindsay Precast and rack systems offered by Terrasmart. CEP Renewables, the company that owns the property beneath the panels, has leased it on a long-term basis to NJR Clean Energy Ventures, a division of Garden State utility New Jersey Resources, which will be in charge of managing the farm.
Over 4,000 residences are expected to be powered by the farm’s 56,000 solar panels. In total, Mount Olive was able to recover roughly $2.3 million in taxes it had spent on the former Superfund site thanks to the operation.
All of this represents a significant turn of events for the old dump. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, the Combe Fill North Landfill first became a municipal landfill in 1966. (EPA). It accepted dry sewage sludge, household waste, and industrial waste for 12 years. In 1978, the Combe Fill Corporation (CFC) acquired it. The landfill was found to be polluting surrounding private wells and the groundwater beneath the property with volatile organic compounds the new owners.
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The landfill’s interior air was also tainted. Although CFC declared bankruptcy in 1981, the dump was never adequately closed. Finally, a plan to clean up the former landfill was created in 1986 by the EPA and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP), and it was finished in 1991. The dump was removed from the Superfund National Priorities List in 2004, but the EPA continues to evaluate the success of the cleaning activities every five years despite this.
The transition of the Combe Fill North Landfill from a landfill to a solar farm is becoming more typical. According to CEP Renewables and the EPA, the number of landfill solar projects in the United States has increased by 80% over the past five years. The business believes that this is because installation developers have become more skilled, and its partner CS Energy agrees.
With CEP Renewables, Lindsay Precast, and Terrasmart, this is our eighth project together, our seventh project with Lindsay Precast, and our fourteenth landfill solar project overall. Mike Dillon, director of operations for CS Energy, made the news. We were able to deliver this excellent landfill solar project, which will have major long-term financial and environmental advantages for this town, because of our solid partnerships with each of these sector leaders.
