CASPER, Wyo. — The Wyoming House of Representatives passed two bills on first reading during their Monday, Feb. 24 floor session related to the disposal of wind turbine parts.
House Bill 217 would ban the disposal of wind turbine blades in Wyoming landfills. The blades could be discarded at facilities which aim to reuses recycle, breaks down or repurpose the blades.
“We need to re-purpose these blades,” House District 59 Representative Bunky Loucks said ahead of the vote. “There is lots of new research out there saying that these can be recycled. It is in the best interest of the state to not pile them up into our landfills. Have them re-purposed.”
A separate bill would allow the disposal of the wind blades at former coal mine sites being reclaimed. House Bill 129 would allow only the base material of blades and towers to be buried in abandoned coal mine sites, requiring “the removal of all mechanical, electrical and other materials from the decommissioned wind turbine blades and towers.”
“These are not parts that can be recycled,” House District 03 Representative Eric Barlow said. “It keeps them out of the land fills. It maybe generate a little bit of a revenue for those coal mines.”
An amendment to House Bill 129 aims to define in statute that reclaimed coal mine sites would not fall under landfall regulations.
House District 58 Representative Pat Sweeney expressed opposition to the proposal to ban the disposal of wind turbine blades in landfills, though he agreed that encouraging recycling of the blades is a good idea.
“We’re not prepared for this,” he said. “I’m arguing on behalf of my community, of our community, why are we making this moratorium so quickly? I just don’t think we are there yet.”
He noted that the Casper Regional Landfill has been accepting wind turbine blades.
“Our city’s landfill has accepted and has the space,” Sweeney said. “What this bill does is totally restricts the ability for our city land fill to continue to take that. We have received, the last number I heard was an excess of $600,000.”
“If we were currently ready to grind and put these into other products, I wouldn’t have a problem.”
He asked his colleagues to kill the bill this year and consider it again during their 2021 session.
Loucks said he was open to an amendment to the proposed bill which would wait to put the rules into effect until a later date.
“We can push that date back,” he said.
Sweeney said that most of the wind turbine parts are recyclable and that banning their disposal could end up leading to added disposal costs for wind energy companies. He said such costs could be passed onto Wyoming consumers.
“A couple of years isn’t going to do the trick,” he said. “A total ban doesn’t make sense either. 85% of the turbines is recyclable.”
“I’m asking for a no-vote. Let’s revisit this next year.”
House District 16 Representative Mike Yin asked whether the state bans the disposal of other materials or whether this would be unique to wind turbine blades.
“Do we do this for any other types of waste disposals?” he asked. “Would we consider doing this with all plastics for example to force them to be recycled?”
House District 27 Representative Mike Greear said that he thought it was a good idea to encourage diverting waste away from landfills.
“This is actually to encourage diversion from out landfills,” he said. “I think we all believe strongly in recycling and diversion. It has been very difficult in Wyoming to engage in diversion. This type of bill encourages that.”
The House passed both bill on first reading and would need to do so on two further readings for the bills to move to the Senate for consideration.
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