"Trump EPA Gives Landfills a Pass on Climate-Warming Methane"

"EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt quietly gave the nation’s largest waste management companies a heads-up nearly three weeks earlier that a reprieve would be coming."

"The Environmental Protection Agency has announced it will delay rules aimed at cutting methane emissions from landfills, a move that could unravel attempts to limit the potent greenhouse gas from leaking into the atmosphere from the nation's garbage dumps.

The rules, created during the Obama administration to help combat climate change, require landfills to measure and capture methane, a greenhouse gas with significantly more heat-trapping power than carbon dioxide, over a shorter timeframe. They would reduce methane emissions from landfills by 334,000 tons a year, starting in 2025, roughly the equivalent of 8.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year.

'Landfills are the third-largest source of methane emissions, so they're really a big source of climate pollution,' said Peter Zalzal, a lead attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund. 'Our concern is that this is the first in a series of actions that will undermine these efforts and eventually do away with them altogether.'"

Georgina Gustin reports for InsideClimate News May 24, 2017.