waste to energy

- January 6, 2015, LocalSYR

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"375","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 222px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]It’s the next step to allow trash from Cortland County to be brought into Onondaga County’s Waste to Energy facility.

Both counties’ legislatures this week have held public hearings on the so called “Ash for Trash” plan.

For two decades now Onondaga County's Waste to Energy facility has been burning trash only from Onondaga County.

The legislature is now considering changing that law to allow for trash to come in from Cortland County.

The the extra trash would allow the incinerator to meet the minimum levels of trash it handles as established in a new contract agreed to between OCRRA and the plant operator, Covanta.

- by Brittany Wallman, December 9, 2014, Sun Sentinel

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"340","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"139","style":"width: 362px; height: 139px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","width":"362"}}]]Neighbors of the "Mount Trashmore'' landfill in northern Broward descended on County Hall Tuesday, worried about plans to close a trash-burning incinerator in the region.

Hundreds piled into County Commission chambers, some having arrived on a bus from the Wynmoor Village senior condo coummunity in Coconut Creek. City officials and residents there fear the displaced trash could end up heaped upon the landfill, officially named Monarch Hill but long dubbed Mount Trashmore by locals.

Waste Management's Wheelabrator Technologies Inc. wants Broward County Commission approval to stop using the northern trash-to-energy plant. Under the proposal, the garbage would rumble south in trucks through the heart of the county to an incinerator on U.S. 441, north of Griffin Road.

- by Patrice Gallagher, No Incinerator Alliance

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"331","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"320","style":"width: 333px; height: 222px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: No Incinerator Alliance","width":"480"}}]]On November 20, 2014, Frederick County, Maryland's Board of County Commissioners cancelled plans to build a 1500 ton-per-day waste-to-energy incinerator, ending a 10 year citizens' effort to kill the project and put better alternatives for community waste management in place.

The vote was 3 to 2, and all three who voted to cancel had previously supported the project.

As a citizen activist who has fought this project since 2006, it feels great to finally be able to put this terrible idea to rest, and begin to help our county focus on more recycling, repurposing and composting — perhaps in the form of a Resource Recovery Park, as many other communities around the nation are doing successfully.

How did we do it? I suppose the best answer I can give for this is: persistence. The organized opposition got its start with one woman who decided to educate herself and any other interested citizens by inviting to our community a national expert on sustainable waste management. He made a lot of sense to us... much more sense than those advocating for a large incinerator project — the Northeast Maryland Waste Disposal Authority.

We began as a loose coalition of activists from many walks of life, most of whom had no knowledge or experience in waste management, but who educated ourselves along the way and were fortunate to eventually attract national experts and environmental organizations (including Energy Justice Network), engineers, lawyers and accountants to our ranks, who shared their expertise with us and helped us make the case against incineration, and in favor of other more economically and environmentally sound ways to think about our waste as a resource to be reused, not burned.

- Associated Press, November 21, 2014, Herald-Mail

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"313","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 283px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]The Frederick County Commissioners are scrapping plans for a waste-to-energy incinerator after more than five years of debate.

The Frederick News-Post reported that the board voted 3-2 Thursday night to cancel a contract with Wheelabrator Technologies Inc. for the $471 million project.

The board unanimously voted in favor of hauling the county's trash to an out-of-state landfill for up to five years.

The project suffered a blow in April when Carroll County pulled out of an agreement to jointly fund the project.

The incinerator had been planned for an industrial park south of Frederick near the Monocacy National Battlefield. Opponents, including the National Park Service, had argued it would pollute the air and water, and obstruct views from the Civil War site.

- by Bobby Zipp, November 20, 2014,  Swarthmore Phoenix

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"311","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 189px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]Two weeks ago, a group of the Green Advisors conducted a waste audit of Kohlberg Hall and the Science Center. The purpose of the annual audit is to create a visual representation of the amount of waste produced by those buildings and test how well the Swarthmore community knows what to compost, recycle and put in the trash. Spearheaded by Green Advisor coordinators Kelley Langhans ’16,  Indy Reid-Shaw ’17 and Laura Laderman ’18, a team of GAs spent a day sorting through the 347 pounds of waste that was produced by Kohlberg and the Science Center on a single day and recorded the amount of waste in each of the three categories that was incorrectly disposed of. They found that out of everything that had been placed in trash bins, 35.3 percent of it was actually trash, and the rest could have been composted or recycled. Trash at Swarthmore is burned at Covanta Waste facility in Chester, the largest energy-from-waste incinerator in the country, which is located about eight miles away from the college.

- by Grady Trimble,  October 24, 2014, WLBZ

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"298","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 210px; float: left; margin: 3px 10px;"}}]]A team of University of Maine researchers are gearing up to study the possibility of bringing new technology called "Trashanol" to Maine.

"Trashanol" is a waste-to-energy technology developed by Maryland-based company Fiberight. Basically, it is a process that converts household waste into fuel.

The technology is sparking interest in Eastern Maine, because pretty soon, nearly 200 towns in the region will face substantially higher costs to dispose of their trash at the PERC plant in Orrington. The long term contracts for those towns is up in 2018, and they are all expecting PERC will drastically increase their fees.

Those towns, which are represented by the Municipal Review Committee, or MRC, hired UMaine researchers to explore "Trashanol" as an alternative. While the deal hasn't been finalized yet, MRC will spend $20,000 for the research. Dr. Hemant Pendse with UMaine's Forest Biodproducts Research Institute will lead it.

- by Eric Reinhardt, October 13, 2014, Business Journal News Network

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"297","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 231px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]OWEGO, N.Y. — Lockheed Martin Corp. (NYSE: LMT) has signed a manufacturing agreement with Concord Blue Energy, Inc. to provide all manufacturing support for the firm’s reformertechnology.

That technology converts waste to energy using advanced conversion technology.

Lockheed Martin is now the “exclusive manufacturing provider” of the Concord Blue reformer, Lockheed said in a news release distributed on Friday.

Concord Blue specializes in transforming nearly any form of waste into a variety of clean, renewable fuels and energy.

Concord Blue USA, Inc. is headquartered in Los Angeles. The firm also operates international offices in India, Germany, and Dubai.

Lockheed Martin and Concord Blue Energy, Inc. in 2013 reached an agreement to offer an advanced waste-conversion system to address waste disposal, energy security, and climate-control issues.

Advanced waste conversion is an “emerging” technology that uses gasification processes to convert waste products to electricity, heat, and synthetic fuels, according to the Lockheed news release.

It addresses the current burden on landfills, conventional incineration, and fossil fuels, along with the desire for green-baseload energy, Lockheed said.

Concord Blue’s waste-to-energy process employs a patented technology called steam thermolysis to convert waste material using heat transfer instead of incineration, “efficiently” producing syngas without combustion.

Headquartered in Bethesda, Md., Lockheed Martin Corp. is a security and aerospace company that employs about 113,000 people globally. The firm focuses on the research, design, development, manufacture, integration, and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products, and services.

The corporation generated net sales of $45.4 billion in 2013.

- by Neil Seldman, August 22, 2014, Institute for Local Self-Reliance

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"280","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"365","style":"line-height: 20.6719989776611px; width: 300px; height: 341px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","width":"321"}}]]The Regional Solid Waste Management Board that oversees the County and City of Fredericksburg landfill will not pursue a garbage and industrial waste incineration-gasification facility. The County received no bid that it considered financially beneficial to the County and City and dropped the project.

StopTheStaffordIncinerator.com has submitted an FOIA Request to obtain copies of the proposals submitted.

• See local news story, R-board expected to toss alternative trash ideas.
• Also see, Don’t make county an incinerator guinea pig
• Also see, Stafford nowhere near landfill capacity

Citizens who have been opposed to the project for several years were pleased with the decision and are now pressing the County to implement expanded recycling and composting. Despite having decades left of landfill capacity, the regional authority wanted an incinerator. 

Bill Johnson, StopTheStaffordIncinerator.com activist, wants to unite the government, business and citizens to plan and implement recycling and enterprises expansion under a zero waste policy initiative. The county and city have decades of landfill capacity available; a key reason why there was no need to rush into an incinerator-based solution. “Now is the time to expand recycling and composting so that the landfill will serve households and businesses for generations to come,” said Johnson.

Mike Ewall, director of Energy Justice Network, has been the prime source of technical assistance observes that this is the second politically and fiscally conservative county in the Mid Atlantic region to reject garbage incineration as an acceptable solid waste management approach. Carroll County, MD paid $1 million this year to get out of a contract for garbage incineration. In June, Energy Justice Network helped citizens in Lorton, VA get their Fairfax County, VA to reject a 50 year expansion of a construction and demolition landfill due to close in 2016.

ILSR and Urban Ore, Berkeley, CA supported the citizens in Stafford County and Lorton through workshops and guest articles in the local media.

- by Allentown Residents for Clean Air, September 30, 2014, Stop the Burn

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"279","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"line-height: 20.6719989776611px; width: 300px; height: 211px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]The City of Allentown is pulling out of the contract with Delta Thermo Energy.

This news surely spells the death of the experimental trash and sewage sludge incinerator that threatens Allentown.

HOWEVER, the company’s air and waste permits are still out there. The air permit could be sold to other companies who want to develop that site. Their waste permit could be used by anyone here or elsewhere in the state, if not challenged.

We also have an ongoing lawsuit to get the Allentown Clean Air Ordinance on the ballot, so that voters can adopt a law protecting the city against incinerator pollution from any company in the future. This is also critical, since the case will affect whether local governments anywhere in the state can adopt their own clean air laws.

Allentown can breathe easy for now, but let’s not go to sleep. This isn’t over yet.

If you can help give back, your donations are much needed and appreciated, and will help ensure that this victory is final and that other communities also get the support they need.

- by Phillip Ellis and Neil Gormley, October 4, 2014,  Huffington Post

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"278","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"line-height: 20.6719989776611px; width: 200px; height: 134px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: Samantha Bornhorst"}}]]Joe Poole Lake is a popular destination for Dallas and Fort Worth residents looking for a weekend escape to the great outdoors. Lined with barbecue grills, hiking trails and sandy beaches, the 7,400-acre lake and its wooden welcome sign invite endless opportunities to relax and unwind. For Becky Bornhorst, a stay-at-home mom who never missed a PTA meeting, this lake was where she went to relax and create memories by sailing on a catamaran with her husband and two children and walking the family dog, a yellow lab named Nellie.

Six years ago, Becky was forced to find a new spot to make these memories after she became aware that levels of mercury, a potent neurotoxin, were increasing in the lake — an increase she blames on the industrial incinerators nearby.

Commercial/industrial waste-burning incinerators like the one near Joe Poole Lake burn waste produced from utilities and mining, oil and gas operations or from the manufacturing of wood and pulp products, chemicals and rubber. About 15,000 incinerators are scattered across our country.