What problem does it solve? Many municipalities have old solid waste landfills that were never properly closed. This is both an environmental threat, and an outstanding liability for the municipality. The Governor has a goal of 100% sustainable energy for the State by 2050. This Authority would; relieve the municipality of their liability for closure of the landfill; properly close the landfill to alleviate the environmental pollution; then install sustainable energy , most likely solar energy to meet the goal. What is your solution and who does it apply to? By creating an Authority, it allows all the landfill's liabilities and resources to be pooled together. A major reason the landfills they remain improperly closed is that the municipality cannot afford the proper closure. The authority will be able to pool all the inadequate closure funds available, supplementing funding with bonding if needed, to properly close the landfills. Once closed, the solar installation will provide annual revenue that can be place back into the pool and used for the next closure, and so on and so on. The solution is a cash flow solution. The Authority is a means to solve the cash flow problem of high capital closure costs with long term revenue from the solar development. Any bonding needing to pay capital costs is paid by long-term revenue from the solar facilities. This would be a new Authority, or it could be incorporated into an existing state authority as long as the appropriate legislative changes are made to the existing authorities mission. What is the anticipated impact? Several years ago, the cost to properly close all the old landfills in NJ was estimated at $3 billion. Although this may not cover everyone of those landfills from that report, it would be a significant benefit of probably between $1 and $2 billion in savings to municipalities. There's a significant benefit to the environment of properly closing these old landfills, both in preventing water pollution and the generation of greenhouse gases. It would also generate hundreds if not thousands of megawatts of clean sustainable power. It would take legislative action to accomplish this, but the environmental benefits of both properly closed landfills and clean energy would be extraordinary.
An idea that actually supports the environmental goals of the state.
Interesting that the cons relate more to workforce education than implementation. Just the ability to search on a computer vs paper lookup is huge.
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