incineration

- 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.

- by Stephen Handley, October 3, 2014, Sustainablog

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"273","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"line-height: 20.6719989776611px; width: 333px; height: 250px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]In Tulsa, Oklahoma, green waste is very much on the political agenda. According to Tulsa World, the city’s trash board voted this week to pursue a plan to collect and incinerate it rather than invest in an active composting facility. Proponents of the composting plan are deeply disappointed by the vote.

City Councilor Karen Gilbert says, “That [vote] sets us further back from the original plan of having an active composting, mulching facility,” Gilbert said. “It’s frustrating that we start off with an investment, but then we don’t follow through with the priority of that investment.”

Those in favor of the incinerator approach complain that the city can’t afford the cost of the proposed composting facility and that is costs too much money to separate out the green waste from the rest of the city’s trash. Doesn’t it seem as though the situation in Tulsa is a microcosm of the entire “global warming/climate change” debate going on around the globe?

- by Emily Opilo, October 1, 2014, McClatchy-Tribune Regional News

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In a letter dated Sept. 26, Allentown solicitor Jerry Snyder wrote that Bucks County-based Delta Thermo Energy had "consistently failed to advance" plans for a 48,000-square-foot facility on Kline's Island that would have burned pulverized municipal waste and sewage sludge to generate electricity.

- by  Ingrid Söderbergh, September 18, 2014, Phys.org

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"265","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"line-height: 20.6719989776611px; width: 333px; height: 166px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]Dioxins forms faster, at lower temperatures and under other conditions than previously thought. This may affect how we in the future construct sampling equipment, flue gas filtering systems for waste incineration and how to treat waste incineration fly ash. These are some of the conclusions Eva Weidemann draws in her doctoral thesis, which she defends at Umeå University on Friday the 26 of September.

Dioxins is a collective name for a specific group of chlorinated organic molecules where some exhibit hormone disrupting and carcinogenic properties. Dioxins can form in waste incineration, as the flue gases cool down.

"When you incinerate waste, some dioxin formation is inevitable, but with the modern flue gas cleaning systems the emission through the stack is minimized, The dioxins are filtered from the flue gases and end up in the fly ash", says Eva Weidemann.

- by Jarrel Wade, August 6, 2014, Tulsa World

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"241","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 320px; height: 211px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: waste-management-world.com"}}]]Trash board members voted Tuesday to begin the process of seeking bids for contractors to pick up curbside green waste and take it to the city’s burn plant.

The recently introduced plan from the Tulsa Authority for Recovery of Energy is to send green waste to the city’s burn plant permanently, essentially ending Tulsa’s curbside green-waste program as it was originally promised.

The TARE board vote authorizes staff to invite bids from contractors for board evaluation and possible acceptance at future meetings.

The vote followed discussion about several contractual obligations that hindered implementation of the new plan.

TARE officials have said their goals are to keep costs low, keep the system environmentally responsible and make the trash system simple for customers.

One problem is that the city would be forced to continue requiring that green waste be put in clear plastic bags even though it likely would go in the same trucks to the same location as trash.

The contract with the city’s haulers, NeWSolutions, requires that green waste be in a separate waste stream, TARE attorney Stephen Schuller said.

“Competitive bidders could bring a lawsuit on such a fundamental change,” he said.

Another problem discussed was TARE’s inability to seek bids for contractors to take the green waste to the city’s green-waste facility, which some board members had requested for price comparison.

Schuller said a contract between the board and the burn plant mandates that all green waste — if taken by a TARE contractor — go to the burn plant, owned by Covanta Energy.

- Kathleen McLaughlin, August 4, 2014, Indianapolis Business Journal

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"240","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 222px; height: 148px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: Indianapolis Business Journal"}}]]The city of Indianapolis faces financial penalties if it launches alternative recycling programs, under a pending deal with incinerator operator Covanta.

The Indianapolis Board of Public Works will vote Wednesday on an agreement that’s worth more than $112 million in revenue to Covanta, which would become the city’s main residential recycling provider for the next 14 years.

Covanta is proposing to build a $45 million recycling facility next to its incinerator on Harding Street. Under the deal negotiated by Republican Mayor Greg Ballard's administration, the city would continue to send all household waste to Covanta, but the company would pluck out recyclables and sell them on the commodities market.

Companies that rely on recycled goods oppose the deal because they say Covanta’s facility would generate sub-par material for their industries. But the Department of Public Works says it’s a way to boost the city’s overall recycling rate without requiring residents to sign up for a separate curbside service.

Curbside recycling is currently available for an additional monthly fee through Republic Services, but participation is low.

Democrats on the City-County Council want the city to pursue other alternatives, but that would be impossible under terms of the Covanta deal, which were made available to the Board of Public Works on Friday.

- Linda Damas Kelley, August 6, 2014, West Hawaii Today

UPDATE: despite strong organizing efforts, an outpouring of community opposition and strong research we've compiled to show how awful this plan is, city council voted unanimously on Aug 13th to approve Covanta's plan that allows 30 years of New York City waste to be brought by train to Chester for incineration.  In fact, it'll go through Chester to Wilmington, DE, then will be trucked back into Chester, with five more trucks than they'd normally need since rail boxes are smaller than normal trucks.  It's an insane plan and we'll continue to fight it.  See Chester Environmental Justice for details.

-  by Vince Sullivan, July 24, 2014, Delaware County Daily Times

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"237","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"272","style":"width: 255px; height: 145px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: LancasterOnline.com","width":"480"}}]]Dozens of city residents attended Wednesday night’s council meeting to voice their opposition to a proposal that would allow the country’s largest trash incinerator to construct additional buildings on its property.

Covanta’s Delaware Valley Resource Recovery Facility, located in the first block of Highland Avenue, is seeking to construct a 16,000-square-foot building that would enable the facility to handle a different kind of truck traffic. The company recently entered into a 20-year contract with New York City to incinerate up to 500,000 tons of municipal waste each year. The waste would be brought from New York to Wilmington, Del., via train and then the rail boxes would be put onto tractor-trailers to be trucked to Chester.

A Covanta vice president attended two planning commission meetings where he explained that the incinerator is not seeking to increase its trash-burning capacity, which is regulated by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, but said the trash from New York would replace other municipal waste sources. He added that because more trash wouldn’t be coming into the facility, the number of trucks driving to the incinerator would not increase. The rail box building would enable the boxes to be removed from the trucks and emptied onto the tipping floor.

The proposal also calls for a 1,000-square-foot office building. The Chester City Planning Comission recommended that city council deny the application.