We’ve seen it happen
time and time again. A municipality or public institution announces its plans
to build a waste-to-energy plant and environmental groups and opponents wreak
havoc in order to block it. Historically, these tactics have been successful,
especially when targeting public entities. But maybe not in Cleveland.
Days after the U.S.
Environmental Agency sent a letter criticizing the city’s standards and urging
the Ohio EPA to review the project, the city has amended its design and plans
to resubmit for an air permit. This comes as a surprise to many who had thought
the final nail on the coffin had been put in place.
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| A map shows where the proposed gasification plant at the Ridge Road Transfer Station. (Courtesy: Google Maps) |
Cleveland Mayor Frank
Jackson announced plans for a $180 million gasification plant at the Ridge Road
Transfer Station in early 2010. The idea is that the facility would produce
power that would be sold to Cleveland Public Power. Before Jackson had even
finished his speech, opponents of the project set to work to kill it.
The city sends approximately
60 truckloads of waste to landfills daily, trucking it to Mansfield for a price
tag of $9 million each year. Jackson and his cohorts aim to reduce that number
by a third and have set an additional goal of having Cleveland Public Power be
25% dependent on alternative energy sources by 2025.
The proposed
gasification plant would be built by Princeton Environmental Group of New
Jersey and use technology from Kinsei Sangyo, Co. in Japan. Cleveland’s
facility would process about 560 tons of trash per day to produce 15 MW of
power.
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| City Councilman Brian Cummins has tried to block the gasification plant from moving forward. |
City Councilman Brian
Cummins had led the charge for killing the waste-to-energy project. Cummins and
critics from the Ohio Citizen Action and the Earth Day Coalition cite many
concerns including the possibility of toxins like lead and mercury to be
emitted through its exhaust, the inherit risk in a new technology and the cost.
They propose trying to bolster the city’s lagging recycling rate (Cummins says
the rate is only 5% while the city cites 11%) and exploring composting and
anaerobic projects.
Regardless of what the
actual recycling rate in Cleveland is, efforts have been made to increase
recycling over the past three years and the city insists that it would continue
to promote the practice. Research shows that recycling actually INCREASES in
areas with waste-to-energy facilities, in part because metals and glass are
automatically pulled out of the feedstock before it is processed.
As for the question
about mercury and lead, Cleveland Chief of Communications Maureen Harper
assures us that that the plant doesn’t create these elements and so they will
not be emitted if they don’t go into the gasification process.
Additionally, the city
funded a composting project in June and July 2010 where 15 tons of compostable
materials were diverted from the landfill. Pulling organic material for
composting isn’t always economically feasible and it doesn’t do any harm to the
environment or the wallet it to send it through the gasifier.
The city’s modifications
in an attempt to meet the EPA standard include raising the smokestack from 175
feet to 200 feet, which would spread the material over a wider area.
Better BTU Take: It’s
still a toss up whether or not this project will make it to fruition,
especially with the dedicated group of naysayers working to stop it. For our
sake, we hope it does and we’ll keep our eyes on it.
For more information on
this project:
Study Showing How
Recycling Increases in Areas with WTE Plants:
Recycling and WTE
Compatibility by Jonathan Kiser
Various articles by Dr.
Nick J. Themelis, Columbia University
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