Maryland has substantially underestimated the amount of greenhouse gases produced from its landfills, according to a new report by an environmental watchdog organization.
The Environmental Integrity Project, in a report issued this week, estimated that municipal landfills in Maryland released about 51,500 tons of methane and 500,000 tons of carbon dioxide in 2017.
But the Maryland Department of Environment estimated that in 2017 those landfills emitted just 12,500 tons of methane and 136,00 tons of carbon dioxide — amounts that are roughly one quarter of what the Environmental Integrity Project calculated.
After looking through a federal database on greenhouse gas emissions, Ryan Maher, a co-author of the report, said that he realized that the state had excluded five landfills and included one nonexistent landfill in its greenhouse gas emission estimations.
Click here to read the rest of the article written by Elizabeth Shwe over at Maryland Matters
