A publication of Work On Waste USA, Inc., 82 Judson, Canton, NY 13617 315-379-9200 Dec. 1993 - Jan. 1994
The fifth of our 24-part series continues our review of waste-to-energy MSW incinerators, including references to Waste Not issues. Vendor/Operator from GAA’s 1993 edition. Type: M=Mass Burn; R=RDF. Tons-Per-Day is incinerator design capacity. APC = Air Pollution Controls: 1-ESP. 2-Baghouse. 3-Dry Scrubber. 4-NOx Control. 5-Wet Scrubber.
INCINERATOR V = VENDOR Year TONS-PER-DAY
LOCATION O = OPERATOR Type APC On-Line 1988 1991 1993
CA - Commerce7 V: FOSTER WHEELER M 2,3,4, 1987 400 400 360
O: L.A. Sanitation District
Long Beach8 V/O: MONTENAY M 2,3,4 1988 1380 1380 1380
Stanislaus Co.9 V/O: OGDEN MARTIN M 2,3,4 1989 - 800 800
CT - Bridgeport10 V/O: WHEELABRATOR M 2,3 1988 2250 2250 2250
Bristol11 V/O: OGDEN MARTIN M 2.3 1988 650 650 650
CALIFORNIA: Continued from Waste Not # 254.
(B) We did not include the 170 tpd tire incinerator owned by Oxford Energy in Westley, Stanislaus County. Facility is called “Modesto Energy Limited Partnership.” Oxford Energy went bankrupt: “reorganizing with new partners (CMS will have primary involvement.)” The tire incinerator went on line in August 1987: “Burns 5.3 million tires/year.” General Electric Corporation are listed as the designer and builder of this incinerator. Ref GAA 1993, pp 251-252; 265-266*.
(C) A good review of the battles against incinerators proposed in California, especially the Ogden Martin incinerator proposed for South Central L.A., is: War on Waste, by Louis Blumberg & Robert Gottlieb, published by Island Press, 1989.
(D) A good contact is Will Baca, 3439 Casco Court, Hacinda Heights, CA 91745. Tel: 818-330-9659.
7. Commerce, California. The incinerator is jointly owned by the L.A. County Sanitation District and the City of Commerce and sells 11.5 megawatts of electricity, daily, to Southern California Edison. While the haulers pay about $25/ton to dump garbage, the owners are paid approx. 14 cents a kilowatt/hour by the utility. Thus, the utility subsidizes this incinerator by passing the costs on to the rate payers. To treat the ash they built a mini-concrete plant where they make slabs of concrete by mixing the fly ash with cement and the bottom ash, screened to remove the big chunks (with a slurry). After it’s set in roll-off bins, the slabs are dumped in a special area of the landfill, where trucks run over it and turn it back to gravel. They are trying desperately to make it a recyclable product to use as a road-base material. Costs from $3 to $10 a ton of processed garbage. Before the ash-to-concrete process began INFORM ranked this incinerator the highest for Operations and Maintenance Costs and the highest for Combined Construction and Operation/Maintenance Costs; and third highest in Construction Cost per ton of Design Capacity out of 14 incinerators they had data on. Ref: Burning Garbage in the US, Practice vs. State of the Art, authors, Clarke,M., deKadt,M., Saphire,D., published in 1991 by INFORM, Inc., 381 Park Avenue South, NY, NY 10016-4040, Tel: 212-689-4040. For more info. contact Will Baca, tel: 818-330-9659, (address above). See also WN#s 39,40,45,55,60,87.
8. Long Beach, California. Also burning autoclaved medical waste. They use the Wheelabrator Wes-Phix ash-to-concrete system of treating the ash. According to Will Baca, Wheelabrator charges them over a million dollars a year in royalty fees for use of their process (on top of running it). Costs about $10 a ton. After two performance tests the incinerator was first rejected by the City Council in Dec 1988 and again on Sept 26, 1989, on advice of counsel, after a report cited the incinerator with 88 violations of its Permits to Construct and Operate. Bill Davis, the Project Director for the incinerator, “cited several defects in the plant for denying acceptance of the plant. He specifically cited a 70-foot-high by 210-foot-long concrete wall that is cracking due to blows from the bucket of a crane used to transfer garbage from a housed pit to the incinerators...” --Press-Telegram, Nov 29, 1988, p B1. Among the “Description of Deficiencies Existing as of September 1989”: “The baghouse is experiencing excessive air leakage and module wall wastage...” In 1989 the city sued Dravo, who then countersued. Litigation is still not resolved. Currently, operating costs are not being covered by tipping fees. For more info. contact Virginia Siegel, 3541 Easy Ave., Long Beach, CA 90810, Tel: 310-427-2941; or Will Baca at 818-330-9659 (see above).
9. Stanislaus County, California. Also burning autoclaved medical waste at the incinerator. According to Kevin Williams, Health Specialist at the Stanislaus County Department of Environmental Resources in Modesto, by California State Law autoclaved medical waste is redefined as regular MSW. Ogden Martin accept compactors containing the autoclaved material, which are dumped directly into the pit. There are no special handling procedures. The autoclaved material Ogden receives is not shredded nor specially packaged. In December 1993, air emissions tests were performed for dioxins, furans, PCBs, Vinyl Chloride, PAHs, Particulates, Mercury, Metals, HCL, Oxygen, CO2, NOX, SOX, Particulates, total hydrocarbons, formaldehyde, flow rates, pH. For a copy of the test emission results, request a “public information form” from John Cadrett, San Joaquin Valley Unified Air Pollution District, 4230 Kiernan, #130, Modesto, CA 95356. Tel: 209-545-7000. Salomon Bros. acted as Senior Financial Manager. Bonds issued by CA Pollution Control Authority. See WN #s 52,70,81,84.
CONNECTICUT
(A) David Galt, policy analyst for the Connecticut Fund for the Environment, the state is burning 73% of the waste generated in the state. Connecticut’s incinerators have been built through the efforts of a state agency, the Connecticut Resource Recovery Authority (CRRA). The CRRA facilitated the bonds and permitting of these plants and fought hard against incinerator regulations. Citizens in local communities were at their mercy. The CRRA had none. Events are changing slightly. Wheelabrator has recently received a permit from the State to build a 500 tpd MSW incinerator in Lisbon. Against a backdrop of intense citizen opposition and a current State investigation into the permitting process, the incinerator is under construction. The CRRA opposed the Lisbon plant on grounds that the State has enough burn capacity. According to Garrett Brinton of the CT Citizens Action Group [see address above] the CRRA spent over $800 million for financing incinerators in the State. The CRRA blames the recession on the “shortage” of waste, yet the incinerators were sized before recycling and reduction estimates were considered. Though the CT Fund for the Environment does not work on MSW incinerator issues, David Galt is a good resource person. His address: CT Fund, 1032 Chapel Street, New Haven, CT 06510. Tel: 203-787-0646.
(B) RE: MEDICAL WASTE. The State Department of Environmental Protection has approved municipal waste incinerators in the State to burn medical wastes that have been treated. Safeway in Middletown, CT, operates a medical waste incinerator and also operates a shred/microwave process.
(C) We did not include the 300 tpd tire incinerator in Sterling owned by “Exeter Energy Limited Partnership.” (Vendor: Oxford Energy Co.) This incinerator went on line in October 1991. Oxford Energy went bankrupt: “reorganizing with new partners (CMS will have primary involvement.) Plant burns whole & chipped tires.” Ref GAA 1993, pp 265-266.
(D) We did not list the 350 tpd MSW incinerator in Stamford because it’s not ‘waste-to-energy’. This incinerator has an ESP and has been operating since 1972. The incinerator abuts Stamford Harbor, and the ash is sent to Virginia.
10. Bridgeport, Connecticut. Incinerator is called “Bridgeport RESCO.” According to GAA: “Wheelabrator rebuilt plant at site of failed RDF project. Sold plant to Ford Motor Credit Corp. (tax owner); Connecticut Resource Recovery Authority holds title.” Ref GAA 1993, p 254*. According to a 3-part series published by the Bridgeport Post (now the Connecticut Post), May 10-12, 1992: “Bridgeport RESCO officials told The Post they burned they used fabric filters from the incinerator’s baghouse after they installed new filters.”-(5-11-92, p A-4) “Bridgeport RESCO...does not monitor for heavy metal emissions, such as lead and mercury. No testing for metals has been done since the plant was tested for its final permit to operate in 1989.”-(5-10-92, p A-7) The Bridgeport Post reported that a total of 36,488 pounds of hazardous wastes were burned at the plant in 1990, including 7,065 lbs. lead compounds; 2,600 lbs. chromium compounds and 1,542 lbs. copper. The plant hit the headlines in 1992-3 when the State gave Wheelabrator permission to burn “Mount Trashmore”, a huge pile of construction and demolition debris, suspected by both citizens and state officials of containing asbestos and other toxic materials. The burning took place without any extra monitoring of air emissions between Dec 1992 - Jan 1993, at the same time citizens were in the courtroom trying to stop the burn. See also WN# 47,73,197,201.
11. Bristol, Connecticut. See The Bridgeport Post article above. According to a report in the April 23, 1987, Bristol Press: “The Resource Recovery Facility Operating Committee learned recently that Phil Armetta, a Middletown [Connecticut] entrepreneur, will be paid almost $3 million for his role in linking up Ogden Martin Systems Inc. of New Jersey with Bristol-area communities...Armetta has acknowledged receiving a $400,000 developer’s fee and $200,000 for the reimbursement of expenses. He will also be paid another $100,000 each year for the 25 years after the plant is in operation, the minutes say. Ogden Martin President and Chief Executive Officer David Sokol this morning said, though, that the $100,000 fee will escalate each year as the consumer price index increases...Armetta said the fees stem from work done to get the project off the ground. Armetta said he helped convince Bristol to be the host site for such a plant, helped market the project to the other communities and he brought the vendor in...David Sokol, ‘We would rather pay someone a little more over 20 years...than put in all the money up front.’ He reported that Ogden resource recovery projects in the two other communities where local contacts were employed as middle men involved fee arrangements similar to those made with Armetta. Sokol identified those communities as Tulsa, Okla., and Marion County, Oregon...” For more information contact Bill Wagoner, 139 Stonecrest Drive, Bristol, CT 06010. Tel: 203-582-6544. See also WN#s 118, 197.
*1993-1994 Resource Recovery Yearbook, Directory & Guide, by Eileen Berenyi, Ph.D. and Robert N. Gould, 718 pages, published by Governmental Advisory Associates, Inc. (a private consulting/research group), 177 E. 87th Street, NY, NY 10128.
Editors: Ellen & Paul Connett, 82 Judson Street, Canton, NY 13617. Tel: 315-379-9200. Fax: 315-379-0448