Hervey Range Landfill Gas Project

Hervey Range Landfill Gas Project is a landfill gas project located at the Hervey Range Landfill, approximately 25km west of the Townsville city centre in Queensland. It was registered in May 2015 by the proponent LMS Energy Pty Ltd and covers an unknown registered project area, although the overall landfill site itself spans approximately 74.6 hectares.

Landfill gas projects under the Carbon Farming Initiative methodology involve installing a new gas collection system or upgrading an existing one. The standard requirement of these systems is to capture methane gas generated at the landfill from decomposing legacy and non-legacy waste and combust it. This is typically done via a flare or an engine. By combusting methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas, and converting it into less harmful carbon dioxide, the project successfully reduces the site's net emissions.

The Townsville and Hervey Range region supports a mix of conservation, residential, and agricultural land uses, including cattle grazing. The area is situated in the dry tropics and experiences a highly seasonal climate, characterised by high rainfall during the summer wet season and a semi-arid dry season. These environmental conditions heavily influence the region's soils; they are predominantly highly reactive clays that swell when wet and bake hard during the dry season, mixed with sandy loams and poorer earthy soils along the flood-free flats.

This project was originally contracted to the Commonwealth in April 2017 under contract CAC668305, and successfully completed its abatement delivery requirements in June 2022. Interestingly, to complement the ongoing gas capture and rehabilitation of the site, Townsville City Council invested $4 million into a cutting-edge capping initiative. In an Australian first for a local council, they laid an environmentally friendly bituminous geomembrane over the waste. This synthetic cap actively prevents rainwater from entering the landfill, whilst effectively trapping and directing the generated methane toward the project's flare to be safely burned.