RENTON, Wash. - Stand quietly in the inactive areas of King County's sprawling Cedar Hills Regional Landfill and you'll hear it - the constant "hiss" is the sound of money to county waste managers.
"Yes. Yes. The County is making money on this right now," said County Solid Waste Director Kevin Kiernan. "We've been in the energy business for a few months now."
The hissing comes from an elaborate system of pipes, pumps and wells installed throughout the 900-acre landfill.
The county is capturing the large reserves of dirty landfill gases forming under the mountain of trash and selling it to a private company which has constructed a nearby refinery.
Bio Energy Washington (BEW) is cleaning it and injecting it directly into the natural gas pipeline.
BEW has been up and running for only a few months and has started cleaning and selling the gas to Puget Sound Energy. The company says its plant is the largest landfill-gas-to-natural-gas operation in the country.
In the past, the county would drill wells to pump out the gas to prevent fires or explosions and just flare it off. Now that same gas is expected to produce a million dollars in yearly income for the county.
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