State regulators have authorized River Birch landfill to more than double its storage capacity by expanding into a long-closed landfill in Jefferson and St. Charles parishes, which would make it the state's largest.
The approval also grants the company a nationwide service area for trash customers, though the company says it's committed to keeping that reach limited.
State backing came despite community opposition in the nearby Waggaman area and across the Mississippi River in River Ridge and Harahan over what some residents argued are chronic foul odors.
The new expansion will spread into the next-door Greater New Orleans Landfill, a problem dump created before tougher federal and state requirements were adopted. It became a focus of complaints in the 1980s and was capped and fully closed in 1999, years before River Birch owned the site.
State Department of Environmental Quality officials agreed with River Birch in finding that continued trash disposal in an area where it has been occurring safely for decades offered the best protection for the environment and the public, while also ensuring trash has a place to go for the long term.
"The bulk of the expansion project will be on land used historically for landfill operations and that abuts landfill operations," DEQ officials said in a statement explaining the decision. "This provides the additional capacity while maintaining, at least, the status quo of land use."
The new expansion will bring in 351 acres for additional trash storage, bringing the total amount of land dedicated at River Birch to trash to 710 acres, or roughly 540 football fields, agency documents say.
The newly combined landfills are also next to two other landfills that River Birch owns or operates, including one for Jefferson Parish. The combined trash complex on the west bank of the Mississippi River has one of the largest capacities in the nation, an EPA database shows.
The expansion means trash storage at River Birch is expected to continue for the next six decades -- through 2090. Once built out, the landfill pile on the old GNOL site would be 195 feet high and have enough trash to fill the Superdome nearly 27 times.
No 'new social costs'?
DEQ officials concluded, however, that the extension of River Birch's lifecycle and size would bring no "new social costs" to the area.
Lisa Karlin, an east bank resident of Jefferson Parish who has been a vocal opponent of River Birch and the expansion, said that she thinks "she can speak for many in saying it's a disappointing decision by LDEQ."
Company officials said last week that they welcomed DEQ's decision but that it will take several years to grade the site, install new liners designed to prevent groundwater contamination and bring the existing landfill to a required height.
"We expect to start disposing of waste there in about five years, when our existing landfill reaches a height of 60 feet," company officials said in a statement.
River Birch is currently a municipal and industrial landfill and, before the new permit, had previously had a service area of 13 parishes in metro New Orleans and the Bayou parishes.
In the new permit, DEQ accepted River Birch's promises that out-of-state trash will make up a small percentage of the expanded landfill's garbage stream — no more than 10% — and will be focused on supplying still-developing innovative renewable energy projects. Municipal solid waste wouldn't come from areas farther than 200 miles away, the officials said.
The 200-mile radius is not specified in the permit -- a concern for some residents -- but company officials said they will file "a binding addendum" to add the requirement.
In their decision, DEQ officials also downplayed the impact the expanded capacity and service area would have on local traffic or the speed with which that capacity would be used because the permit retains the existing weekly trash volume limit.
Air monitor data
Chronic smells remained a focus of local opponents in comments and during the public hearing earlier this year on the expansion.
Two environmental groups, the Environmental Integrity Project and Join for Clean Air, later weighed in with two local community groups to try to challenge the company's and state's conclusions that the landfill was controlling its odors and emissions adequately and that the expansion wouldn't worsen those problems.
The groups used their own air monitoring data from Waggaman, along with data from the Carbon Mapper methane detection satellite and two others operated by NASA.
Collected over almost nine months starting in mid-August 2025, the air data from the Aeroqual AQS 1 monitor in Waggaman, they alleged, showed methane was coming from River Birch.
The groups pointed to methane peaks at the monitor that coincided with prevailing winds and known big methane leaks from the landfill that River Birch had self-reported to regulators.
The groups noted, for example, methane surface emissions at River Birch between Nov. 12 and 14, 2025, were as much as 64 times the federal threshold, based on the company's self-reported data.
Their air monitor reported its highest peak on Nov. 14, 2025.
River Birch officials said they strongly disagreed with the groups' reading of the air data, suggesting they showed methane, hydrogen sulfide and volatile organic compounds were coming into the Waggaman area "from every direction, not just from the direction of the landfill."
The company also argued the groups' wind readings were inconsistent with their own and that of the New Orleans airport's. Wind readings can figure heavily in determining the source of an emission.
River Birch added that DEQ "regularly monitors our facility for odors and emissions, and in granting approval for GNOL, it has confirmed that River Birch is compliant with all emissions limits."
DEQ officials didn't dispute River Birch was a source of emissions, but found they weren't exceeding background limits and that the company's advanced methane controls, which convert landfill gas into natural gas for fuel, offered a way to contain potential odors.
They noted those systems and others to prevent groundwater contamination would be extended into GNOL.
David J. Mitchell can be reached at dmitchell@theadvocate.com.
