Agenda - Council Work Session - 04/11/2023

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As the Minnesota Brightfields Initiative worked with local governments to explore solar development, they encountered a barrier unique to Minnesota: solar development could not proceed on some sites due to use restrictions imposed on the property by past use of bond financing. While these sites were owned by local governments, they are managed by the state through the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency's Closed Landfill Program. The Closed Landfill Program has frequently used general obligation bonds to finance closure and remediation activities at landfill sites. Revenue generation of a solar project would threaten the tax-exempt status of the State's general obligation bonds. Closed Landfill Program The 1994 Landfill Cleanup Act created Minnesota's Closed Landfill Program (CLP) to properly close, monitor, and maintain Minnesota's closed municipal sanitary landfills. The creation of the program acknowledged that the adverse environmental effects at mixed municipal solid waste landfills resulted not just from industrial waste, but also from household garbage. Therefore, cleanup of these landfills, which served a public need, is a public responsibility. The CLP is unique in that it is the first such program in the nation that provides an alternative to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund program (Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980) for cleaning up and maintaining closed landfills. The CLP gives the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) the responsibility to care for up to 114 closed, state -permitted, mixed municipal solid waste landfills to mitigate risks to the public and the environment. The CLP manages these sites by: • Monitoring environmental impacts and site conditions associated with each landfill • Determining the risk each landfill poses to public health, safety and the environment • Implementing environmental response actions to help reduce site risks • Maintaining the landfill properties and the landfill covers and operating any engineered remedial systems that are necessary • Managing land issues on the property the CLP is responsible for, including working with local governments to incorporate land -use controls at and near the landfills. Closed landfills in the CLP are a subset of closed landfills in Minnesota. Currently, 110 landfills are the responsibility of the CLP, with four more eligible for the program. Of the 110, 45 are state-owned, 53 are owned by municipalities, and 12 are in private ownership. Funding for the CLP comes from the Remediation Fund, the Closed Landfill Investment Fund, and state general obligation bonds (GOB). GOBs are used to fund capital improvements, including the construction of new landfill covers and engineered remediation systems to address groundwater contamination and landfill gas generation, and sometimes to acquire "buffer" land to separate the waste footprint from the surrounding privately owned lands. GOBs have been spent at about half of the program landfills. The CLP is required to develop Land Use Plans for each program landfill. These plans determine appropriate land uses where cleanup activities are occurring and provide information about properties that are affected by groundwater contamination and methane gas migration. The CLP partners with local governments to adopt zoning amendments or other land -use controls to incorporate land uses compatible with the risks at each landfill. The CLP can entering into leases for appropriate property reuse, like solar, at the landfills that are state owned. At landfills that are owned by municipalities or are privately owned, the CLP can review proposed plans for reuse, taking into account prior use of general obligation bonds, where appropriate. However, proactively developing a beneficial reuse program is not authorized or funded in the existing CLP mission.