Waste Not! Carroll

By Chrissy Kadleck | WRN correspondent

Jan. 24 -- One of the dirtiest and most demonized portions of the municipal waste stream may soon be diverted from its centuries-long decomposition site: landfills.

Developing a recycling solution for used disposable diapers, a biological amalgam of complexity, has been a top priority of the global research and development team at TerraCycle Inc., a Trenton, N.J.-based company whose mission is to create innovative solutions for any waste stream headed to the landfill.

TerraCycle´s team of scientists, led by Ernie Simpson, global vice president of research and development, is about to put a clothespin on its formula that will render dirty diapers into a material suitable for plastic lumber, pallets and outdoor furniture.

"We have come up with a continuous method of collecting the material, processing the materials using various methods for sterilization, testing and processing and certain parts of the diaper will be compostable," Simpson said. "We are 90% of the way there with only a small portion of the process yet to be completed. I expect that will happen in the first quarter of 2012."

Albe Zakes, TerraCycle´s global vice president of media relations, said the company is excited about the process.

"We think it could revolutionize the use of disposable diapers," Zakes said.

TerraCycle hopes to launch the diaper recycling program in September. He is hopeful the program will be sponsored by Huggies Brand, its partner in collecting diaper packaging, but the program will accept diapers of any kind.

"We will roll it out in test markets by setting up these smell- and contaminant-proof collection containers [much like the Diaper Genie on a grand scale] at daycare centers and will also offer smaller shipping containers for personal use," he said.

Zakes said the company will "reach out to the couple hundred [daycare centers] already in our program to see who wants to be involved" and the first 25 which volunteer will become the test markets.

"[Recycling] used diapers was a pretty tall order. It´s solving the most complex waste stream known right now in the U.S. There is no more complicated waste stream than that," said Simpson. "The collection and subsequent disposal [of diapers] in large cities is a tremendous burden. If they can be recycled into useable products, that is a bonus for just about any large city."

Simpson said his team of about 10 has worked on developing the solution for less than a year. The impetus for this endeavor came from TerraCycle CEO Tom Szaky.

"When Tom Szaky comes to me and says, ´Make it happen,´ that´s how it starts, and I have to make it happen," he said. "It´s a matter of the intensity and forward-thinking of the CEO is why we are where we are today."

Simpson wouldn’t reveal much about the recycling process, other than to say his team used standard processes for the plastics industry, but those processes are "innovative in how our formulas are put together."

TerraCycle´s research and development team is also working on recycling solutions for feminine hygiene products, discarded chewing gum and cigarette butts.

Feminine Hygiene Products

Simpson said there is no major difference between the recycling process of used diapers and feminine hygiene products.

"By construction they are built from roughly the same materials, and chemically all the materials used are similar," he said. "The process sterilizes the materials from any fecal matter or blood-borne pathogens."

The collection of used feminine hygiene products would be similar to that of diapers.

"We are about 80% there, and we will start the program in Brazil and work back to the United States, depending on our partners," Simpson said.

Chewing gum

Working with TerraCycle´s counterpart in Brazil, Simpson´s team developed a solution for used chewing gum in about six months.

Simpson said his scientists developed a formulation using chewed gum along with other plastic products to create a container that can be placed in public places as a receptacle for people to discard their "already-been-chewed" gum.

He described it like this: "You chew the gum, put it in the container, the container is collected, the container is thrown into a grinder, the grinded material is used to create a mold for new containers."

These containers are already being made in Brazil, he said.

"The whole idea [is] to have these things made and hang them in a bus stop and fast food restaurant," Simpson said. "If you have these containers around [public spaces], people will be encouraged to put the chewed gum into these containers. It cleans up the environment."

Cigarette butts

Brought to the R&D team by Szaky, the scientists worked quickly to develop a smart solution for discarded cigarette butts, a major contributor to litter around the world.

"Cigarettes butts are fibers of various polymers that are bundled together to form the filters," Simpson said. "We basically came up with the idea that you can separate the filter and then blend the filter with other materials and convert the structured materials into other applications."

In six to eight months, TerraCycle created an application that would create a material to be used to make card holders, animal figurines, key chains and small toys.

The company is working with a cigarette producer, which he declined to name, to create the material. The application will be rolled out first in the United States, he said.

Contact WRN correspondent Chrissy Kadleck at ckadleck@yahoo.com.

Originally published January 29, 2012 - Frederick News Post

Here are the facts: The prior Frederick County Board of Commissioners approved a waste-to-energy incinerator as "the best of a poor lot of choices," according to at least two of the commissioners.Over its 30-year life span it will cost the taxpayers of Frederick and Carroll counties approximately $2 billion to pay off and operate, not including major overhauls and Environmental Protection Agency-mandated changes. And after paying it off, someone else will own it, which maybe isn't so bad. By the way, those self-imposed choices were limited to three: a new landfill, long-haul trucking and the incinerator.

Based on what we are paying for long-haul transport and dumping fees today (approximately $8.5 million for 2011), the 30-year cost of business as usual with a 3 percent annual escalator similar to the percentage increase the Northeast Maryland Waste Disposal Authority used to raise its annual management fees to the two counties involved, the total 30-year cost would approximate $401 million.

So the taxpayers will spend five times what we would spend if we stayed with the current process (and instead focused our collective energies on improving/expanding recycling and composting), in order to burn garbage and add poisons to the air we breathe and water some folks drink.

Other municipalities around the country with forward-thinking leadership are achieving 80 to 90 percent recycling/composting. Why can't we? Best case, even with this $2 billion monstrosity, we will be left with 20 to 25 percent waste to be landfilled in some manner. So where is the gain? Bottom line, there is none, only pain!

We know that wastewater will be used to cleanse the incinerator works and then it will be dumped into a pipe to be fed directly into the Potomac, where a poison diffuser will stir it up so as to make it look like the bad stuff such as mercury has vanished. But it hasn't, and it will make its way to the Chesapeake Bay, where ultimately the rocks, and other fish and seafood we consume will take it in.

What doesn't go down the pipe will go up the chimney to again be diffused into the air we breathe. And let's not forget that 20 percent or so that is left over as ash, which will be trucked and landfilled somewhere, may be spread over farmland or used as landfill cover. You should be aware that this incinerator will be allowed to generate up to 90 pounds every year of mercury and that as little as half a teaspoon of this stuff can contaminate a 300-acre lake.

Now here comes the best part. The current BoCC advised us last month that it is "forging ahead" no matter what we think about the above. Last summer, our governor took a hefty contribution from the folks that make these incinerators, and shortly thereafter decided that they are the greenest form of energy generation. He signed a bill elevating them to Tier 1 status despite statements plainly visible on the EPA website indicating that they generate dioxins and numerous other poisons into the environment. And just this week we find out the BoCC is "reeling at the potential costs of watershed plan," which approximate an additional $4 billion to Frederick County taxpayers.

Do you see the irony of these activities at the state and county level?

We will pay five times more to generate additional poisons into the environment, including the bay, and then will pay this enormous additional amount to clean it up. All the while we will continue to generate more poisons that we will have to pay more to clean up.

Is this the kind of governance we want in Frederick and Carroll counties and in our state, and do you want Frederick to become the state capital for tire burning?

I surely hope not!

--

Gary J. Thuro

writes from Frederick.

By Karen Charman on Jan 20, 2012

After the catastrophic trifecta of the triple meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex in Japan last March—what the Japanese are referring to as their 3/11—you would think the Japanese government would be doing everything in its power to contain the disaster. You would be wrong—dead wrong.

Instead of collecting, isolating, and guarding the millions of tons of radioactive rubble that resulted from the chain reaction of the 9.0 earthquake, the subsequent 45- to 50-foot wall of water that swamped the plant and disabled the cooling systems for the reactors, and the ensuing meltdowns, Japanese Environment Minister Goshi Hosono says that the entire country must share Fukushima’s plight by accepting debris from the disaster.

The tsunami left an estimated 20 million tons of wreckage on the land, much of which—now ten months after the start of the disaster—is festering in stinking piles throughout the stricken region. (Up to 20 million more tons of rubble from the disaster—estimated to cover an area approximately the size of California—is also circulating in the Pacific.) The enormous volume of waste is much more than the disaster areas can handle. So, in an apparent attempt to return this region to some semblance of normal life, the plan is to spread out the waste to as many communities across the country as will take it.

At the end of September, Tokyo signed an agreement to accept 500,000 metric tons of rubble from Iwate Prefecture, one of eight prefectures designated for cleanup under a new nuclear decontamination law passed on January 1. The law allows for much of the radioactively contaminated rubble to be incinerated, a practice that has been underway at least since the end of June.

But the sheer amount of radioactive rubble is proving difficult to process. The municipal government of Kashiwa, in Chiba Prefecture to the west and south of Tokyo, recently shut down one of its main incinerators, because it can’t store any more than the 200 metric tons of radioactive ash it already has that is too contaminated to bury in a landfill.

According to the California-based Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network (FFAN), burning Fukushima’s radioactive rubble is the worst possible way to deal with the problem. That’s because incinerating it releases much more radioactivity into the air, not only magnifying the contamination all over Japan but also sending it up into the jet stream. Once in the jet stream, the radioactive particles travel across the Northern Hemisphere, coming back down to earth with rain, snow, or other precipitation. Five days after the Fukushima meltdowns began, radioactive fallout from the disaster reached the West Coast of the United States. Approximately a week later, Fukushima fallout was measured as far away as France.

In October, the journal Nature reported that the Japanese government’s initial estimates of radiation from Fukushima were substantially less than what Scandinavian researchers calculated from a global network of radiation monitoring stations that the Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization uses to detect nuclear weapons tests.

Radiation used to be a word that evoked serious concern in a lot of people. However, the nuclear industry and its supporters have done a masterful job in allaying public fears about it. They do this in significant part by relying on outdated and highly questionable data collected on Japanese atom bomb survivors, while at the same time ignoring and dismissing inconvenient but much more relevant evidence that shows the actual harmful effects of radiation exposure from nuclear accidents. Author Gayle Greene explains this well in a recent article here. In their attempt to win the public over to their viewpoint, nuclear proponents even trot out the dubious theory of radiation hormesis, which says that low doses of radiation are actually good for you, because they stimulate an immune response. Well, so does something that causes an allergic reaction. But I digress…

What Radiation Is

A great help to nuclear proponents is the fact that nuclear physics is complicated, and most people don’t understand even its most basic concepts. The blanket term “radiation” is used to describe all manner of radioactive contamination—as if it’s just one thing—when, in fact, there are different kinds, some much more damaging than others. It also matters exactly what is being exposed to radiation—i.e., exposure outside the body or inside it—and how long the exposure goes on.

In a nutshell, radioactive elements, also known as radioisotopes or radionuclides, are unstable atoms. They seek stability by giving off particles and energy—ionizing radiation—until the radioisotope becomes stable. This process occurs within the nucleus of the radioisotope, and the shedding of these particles and energy is commonly referred to as ‘‘nuclear disintegration.’’ Nuclear radiation expert Rosalie Bertell describes the release of energy in each disintegration as ‘‘an explosion on the microscopic level.”

This process is known as the “decay chain,” and during their decay, most radioactive elements morph into yet other radioactive elements on their journey to becoming lighter, stable atoms at the end of the chain. Some of the morphed-into elements are much more dangerous than the original radioisotope, and the decay chain can take a very long time. This is the reason that radioactive contamination can last so long.

To further complicate the issue, different radioisotopes give off different kinds of radiation—alpha, beta, gamma, X ray, or neutron emissions—all of which behave differently. Alpha emitters, such as plutonium and radon, are intensely ionizing but don’t penetrate very far and generally can’t get through the dead layers of cells covering skin. But when they are inhaled from the air or ingested from radiation-contaminated food or water, they emit high-energy particles that can do serious damage to the cells of sensitive internal soft tissues and organs. The lighter, faster-moving beta particles can penetrate far more deeply than alpha particles, though sheets of metal and heavy clothing can block them. Beta particles are also very dangerous when inhaled or ingested. Strontium-90 and tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, are both beta emitters. Gamma radiation is a form of electromagnetic energy like X rays, and it passes through clothing and skin straight into the body. A one-inch shield of either lead or iron, or eight inches of concrete are needed to stop gamma rays, examples of which include cobalt-60 and cesium-137—one of the radionuclides of most concern in the Fukushima fallout. Aside from use in medical diagnostics, X rays are also produced in nuclear fission, and their effects are similar to gamma radiation. Neutron emissions are the most penetrating of all types of radiation and require a shield of several feet of water or concrete to contain them.

The behavior of radioisotopes out in the environment also varies depending on what they encounter. They can combine with one another or with stable chemicals to form molecules that may or may not dissolve in water. They can combine with solids, liquids, or gases at ordinary temperature and pressure. They may be able to enter into biochemical reactions, or they may be biologically inert.

In her book No Immediate Danger: Prognosis for a Radioactive Earth, Bertell notes that if they enter the body either through air, food, water, or an open wound, “They may remain near the place of entry into the body or travel in the bloodstream or lymph fluid. They can be incorporated into the tissue or bone. They may remain in the body for minutes or hours or a lifetime.” To illustrate how different radioisotopes behave, she points out that: “Plutonium is biologically and chemically attracted to bone as is the naturally occurring radioactive chemical radium. However, plutonium clumps on the surface of bone, delivering a concentrated dose of alpha radiation to surrounding cells, whereas radium diffuses homogeneously in bone and thus has a lesser localized cell damage effect. This makes plutonium, because of the concentration, much more biologically toxic than a comparable amount of radium.”

Specific health effects from internal radiation exposure correlate with where radioisotopes land in the body. Bertell explains: “For example, radionuclides lodged in the bones can damage bone marrow and cause bone cancers or leukemia, while radionuclides lodged in the lungs can cause respiratory diseases. Generalized whole body exposure to radiation can be expressed as a stress related to a person’s hereditary medical weakness. Individual breakdown usually occurs at our weakest point.” In other words, the impact of radiation exposure also depends very much on each individual’s level of health and genetic make-up.

Fukushima’s Unending Fallout

Fetuses in utero, infants, and young children—all of whom have quickly dividing cells—as well as the elderly and people with compromised immune systems are most vulnerable to radiation exposure. “Official” sources like the Environmental Protection Agency and the UC Berkeley Nuclear Engineering Air Monitoring Station consistently downplay the health effects of the fallout. In fact, the EPA was so confident that Fukushima fallout would not be a problem for U.S. citizens that it stopped its specific monitoring of fallout from Fukushima less than two months after the meltdowns began.

But neglecting to monitor the fallout will not make it go away. In fact, another enormous problem with radioactive contamination is that it bioaccumulates in the environment, which means it concentrates as it moves up the food chain. (Think of mercury in fish.) Because many radionuclides are so long-lived, this can be a problem for a very long time. For example, the U.K. is only now considering lifting restrictions on the remaining 334 sheep farms in Wales that are still prohibited from selling any meat because of contamination from the Chernobyl disaster in April 1986.

In this video, FFAN member Kimberly Roberson points out that the first disaster at Fukushima Daiichi following the earthquake and tsunami was accidental: “However, by burning the millions of tons of radioactive rubble, it’s going to provide a brand new humanitarian crisis.” She observes that this crisis—“transgenerational DNA damage that’s passed well into the future”—is additional and intentional, and that everything possible must be done to stop it.

Roberson’s point is well taken. However, the desperate yearning among the Japanese to get past this disaster combined with the uncharted territory of dealing with a triple-whammy catastrophe of this magnitude—earthquake, tsunami, and three nuclear meltdowns—seems to be clouding their vision. The truth is, a nuclear disaster offers no easy or good choices. But some, like vaporizing the radionuclides throughout the atmosphere, will unnecessarily prolong the danger to the people and environment of Japan and spread the pain far and wide.

By Shawn Wright | WRN reporter

Jan. 16 -- Food scraps and other organics are the low-hanging fruit that will be plucked more aggressively from America´s waste stream throughout 2012, industry analysts say."I think that´s where you´re going to see major increases this year," said Mark Lichtenstein, president of the National Recycling Coalition. "This is what we´re promoting. We´re saying, ´Take a look at organics first and let´s build some successes around that. And once you feel good about the successes you built, then let´s start to target other things in the discard stream.´ "

San Francisco set the bar last year after reaching its milestone of composting 1 million tons or 2 billion pounds of compostable organic waste. It took the city 15 years to reach that number since implementing a compost collection program in 1996, but it has saved 2.7 million cubic yards of landfill space, the city says.

"We´re doing wonderful things with organics," said Jeff Danzinger, a spokesperson with the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle). "But you still have roughly one-third of what´s going into the landfills is organic in nature and can be applied in so many different ways."

CalRecycle said it´s hearing of more jurisdictions making a concerted effort to take food composting seriously because it still is the largest component of the U.S. waste stream.

Soil scientist Bob Shaffer, owner of Soil Culture Consulting, works as a composting consultant to farmers around the country and to Recology Inc., which collects and composts San Francisco´s food waste.

Shaffer said the U.S. is having one of the greatest periods of growth in composting he´s seen.

"I´ve been a composter since 1970 or so," Shaffer said, "and this is just really a booming period."

More and more cities are following San Francisco.

"Organics is the place for us to attack right away," Lichtenstein said. "No. 1: it´s such a huge component of the waste stream. No. 2: it´s an absolute sin to be disposing of that stuff in any kind of disposal facility. No. 3: It can add nutrients back into our system. à And No. 4: it´s relatively easy to identify in a waste stream. It´s a lot easier to identify organics than it is a plastic container that you have to educate people as to what number they can recycle."

Meanwhile, Seattle diverted about 90,000 tons of organic waste from landfills in its first year. Seattle´s ordinance requires residents to collect food and yard waste in a special bin, but households are able to opt out if they compost onsite.

Metropolitan Vancouver instituted a region-wide composting mandate last year, which aims to cover all single-family residences by the end of this year.

Portland, Ore., recently began its own citywide compost collection program, and Calgary announced a test run of a system in four neighborhoods. Montreal wants to do something similar, and New York City is trying to figure out how to implement this type of program for its 8 million residents.

"These cities are setting the standard," Lichtenstein said. "I will get people who say, ´Those are big cities. They have the ability to do that.´ But what we have to do, the NRC and organizations like us, is help articulate and peel away from those cities what best practices can be applied elsewhere."

In addition to composting, Lichtenstein, who also leads a sustainability center at Syracuse University, said he sees four issues that will come into play during 2012: China´s goal to recycle and incinerate more of its waste, an increased understanding of sustainable materials management in the U.S., a Senate resolution toward better recycling infrastructure, and creating more jobs from recycling.

"They all kind of intertwine," Lichtenstein said. "And mixed together, they all send a message to me that, ultimately, materials recovery in this country is going to see a resurgence."

U.S. Senate Resolution 251 expressed support for the improvement of the collection, processing and consumption of recyclable materials throughout the U.S., though it has no power.

California passed its own bill late last year that will have teeth in 2012.

The law requires a business, defined to include a commercial or public entity that generates more than four cubic yards of commercial solid waste per week or is a multifamily residential dwelling of five units or more, to arrange for recycling services on and after July 1.

Also part of the bill is California´s goal of a minimum 75% diversion rate by 2020. To help reach that goal, the bill is requiring the Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery to provide a report to the Legislature by Jan. 1, 2014, that provides strategies to achieve that goal.

An EPA report said there are about 9,000 curbside recycling programs in the country, up from 8,875 in 2002, and there are 3,095 community composting programs, down from 3,227 in 2002.

Creating jobs from recycling was a hot topic in 2011 after at least four reports published findings on how the U.S. economy could benefit from a larger recycling infrastructure.

"I predict by the end of this year, coming out of Washington and particularly the EPA, there is going to be much more guidance and impetus for communities across the country to implement sustainable materials management programs," Lichtenstein said, "and to step back and take a look at how they deal with this stuff and really see it as materials to be mined."

Contact Waste & Recycling News reporter Shawn Wright at swright@crain.com or 313-446-0346.

January 12, 2012 | 3:29 p.m.

Possibly overshadowed by the passage Tuesday night of county waste transfer station regulations was the suggestion that a second site for such an operation could be available.

As an aside, it is a bit difficult to understand why the administration of Harford County Executive David R. Craig and the members of the Harford County Council have suddenly been so vigilant in putting together a plan for a trash transfer station. There are certainly reasons why one may be needed, but more about that presently.

Until Tuesday night, discussions of a trash transfer station for Harford County had centered on the former Coleman Plecker's golf site on Route 7 near Route 152 in Joppa. The county recently purchased the property, and it is in a location relatively convenient to I-95 and the county's population centers. On the down side, it is in a high profilearea, near an Interstate gateway to the county and pretty darn close to long established neighborhoods.

Monday night as people were gearing up to protest the county's impending enactment of trash transfer station regulations, a representative from an engineering firm told the Joppa-Joppatowne Community Council there's a relatively remote site in the Aberdeen area that has been considered for such a facility.

Tony Gorski, of D. Moore & Associates LLC, told the community council the transfer station could be placed on an 8-acre site in the Aberdeen area, from which the waste could be shipped less expensively via rail than it would cost to ship it by truck from the Joppa site.

It remains to be seen if the Aberdeen site is the answer. It can be guaranteed that no matter where a trash transfer site is proposed, people who live in the surrounding area will give the proposal close scrutiny and protests will follow unless the site is truly remote.

The suggestion, however, brings to light a key reality of the situation at hand, namely that the sudden push for a trash transfer site is reason enough for everyone in Harford County to demand the process slow down a bit.

The relatively sudden emergence of the Joppa site and the trash transfer station proposal crops up against a backdrop of an impending garbage disposal crisis in the county. For years, the bulk of Harford County's trash has been turned into ash at the waste to energy plant on the edge of the Edgewood area of Aberdeen Proving Ground. The future of that facility is far from certain, and the Army has become rather reclusive with regard to its intentions for upgrading or replacing the facility, which is nearing the end of its useful life.

If the county were forced to deal with bulk garbage rather than ash, the Scarboro Landfill would fill up a lot sooner than is projected. A new landfill, or an expanded Scarboro facility, would be needed. Or the county would have to devise some sort of out-of-county solution for garbage disposal, hence the sudden need for a trash transfer station.

The key part of this issue that doesn't appear to be in the sights of our elected officials is that the issue is one resulting from secretive decisions being made by the Army. Certainly the Army needs to keep things secret when it comes to matters of national defense and military strategy, but garbage incineration and steam production do not fall into these categories. It's time for the Army to be more open about this process, or it's time for our local members of Congress to demand such openness.

Copyright © 2012, The Baltimore Sun

Jan. 13 -- A jail in Kansas is being honored by the U.S. EPA for its recycling efforts.The Hutchinson Correctional Facility in Hutchinson, Kan., has diverted more than 1.4 million pounds of solid waste from landfills since 2010, the EPA said. The facility has recycled more than 17,000 mattresses and is the only mattress recycling center in Kansas, the agency said.

The facility also recycled used inmate jeans. Useable remnants of the jeans are made into quilts that are donated to charitable organizations. Inmates make the quilts, and they’ve made more than 1,000 of them since the program started.

The EPA will present the facility with the WasteWise State Government Partner of the Year award for its efforts.

Contact Waste & Recycling News reporter Jeremy Carroll at jcarroll@crain.com or 313-446-6780.

By Carrie Ann KnauerTimes Staff Writer

TANEYTOWN — About 100 people showed up to the Taneytown CityCouncil meeting Tuesday night for a presentation about a facilitythat would theoretically vaporize trash and leave only recyclablematerials in its place — a concept that led to many questions aboutan offer that seemed too good to be true.

But those residents will have to come back to the next meetingto get more of their questions answered. Due to a closed sessionthat the City Council had scheduled for 8:45 p.m. after notanticipating such a turnout, Mayor Jim McCarron ended the meetingafter only a handful of residents were able to ask questions.

However, many of the questions that were asked — by residents,City Council members and County Commissioners Richard Rothschild,R-District 4, and Robin Bartlett Frazier, R-District 1 — exposedthe underlying skepticism about the company’s offer to build a1,500- to 3,000-ton-per-day facility to manage solid waste, builtand operated with 100 percent private funds.

“Why Taneytown?” McCarron asked after the council members hadall posed their questions.

Oscar Padilla, CEO of ALFA Group LLC, explained that his companyis in negotiations with seven other cities to build their firstplasma gasification facility, which would also be the largest onein the United States, when they were contacted by Westminsterresident John Bixler about Carroll County as a potential site.

“We were looking for a perfect spot, and Mr. Bixler offered us aperfect spot,” Padilla said. “We think Taneytown is it.”

Bixler introduced ALFA Group at the start of the meeting, andsaid that he has been studying plasma gasification for a decade andthought it would be a better way for the county to manage its solidwaste than landfilling, the current method, or building acounty-owned waste-to-energy incinerator, as the county iscontracted to do with Frederick County.

Frederick County officials have said they are looking to breakground on the 1,500 ton-per-day incinerator this summer, butCarroll’s new board of county commissioners has said it would liketo investigate the project from scratch before continuing on withthe project.

ALFA Group has offered to pay the $1.5 million commitment to getthe county out of the agreement, and has also offered to contributemoney toward construction of a Taneytown bypass. The company wouldalso use gray water, or effluent from the city’s wastewatertreatment plant, as a coolant in the plant — and then offer thepost-process clean water back to the city as distilled water.

Residents were confused about the company’s technology and howit differs from an incinerator, and how it was possible that theprocess does not create any pollution of its own.

Padilla explained that the solid waste would be heated to 5,000to 12,000 degrees in an oxygen-deprived chamber.

“We don’t set anything on fire,” Padilla said.

Instead, the materials are broken down to their molecular level,he said. The end products are metals and glass slag, which can besold on the recycling market, he said, and a synthetic gas that iskept onsite and burned to fuel the system. The facility alsoproduces a lot of steam from the cooling of all the materials, andthe steam is used to spin turbines and produce electricity. Twentypercent of that electricity would be used by the facility, Padillasaid, and the other 80 percent can be sold on the grid.

Several residents asked why there aren’t any other plants likethis in the United States if it’s such an amazing technologicalsystem. Padilla said that there are a few dozen plants, but most ofthem are owned by the government or military and used on muchsmaller scales than would be needed to handle a regular stream ofmunicipal solid waste. To make the system most efficient, however,this system would be built large enough to hand several counties’waste, Padilla said, such as Howard, Frederick and Baltimorecounties.

Rothschild asked Padilla if the company’s investors wouldrequire contracts with these counties before putting up the capitalfor the project, and asked if the company had met with the MarylandDepartment of the Environment yet to see if it would even bepossible for them to get an operating permit in the state.

Padilla said that his investors would not require contracts torelease the funding, and said that the company won’t contact theMDE until it knows that the city and county would be interested inthe company pursuing a plant in Taneytown.

The handful of residents who did ask questions wanted to knowabout the company’s background, the technology and its safety andexpress their doubts that the company could do everything that itclaimed. And like McCarron, many wanted to know, “WhyTaneytown?”

Padilla said he had attended the county’s small business seminarheld a few weeks ago and he agreed with a statement by CommissionerDoug Howard, R-District 5, made about Carroll County being theright place and now as the right time for businesses to grow inCarroll.

“We’d like to be right here, right now,” Padilla said.

Reach staff writer Carrie Ann Knauer at 410-857-7874 orcarrie.knauer@carrollcountytimes.com.

© 2012 Carroll County Times.

By Dan Gallagher

Four of the five current Carroll County commissioners ran foroffice and were elected in 2010 based on their opposition to theFrederick-Carroll WTE incinerator. Yet these commissioners arestill contemplating participating in the incinerator project, oneof the largest local government projects in our county'shistory.

According to the signed contract, Carroll is responsible for 40percent of the project - 40 percent of $600 million in constructioncosts, 40 percent of $20 million per year in operating costs and 40percent of the fuel. Several key issues regarding theseresponsibilities need to be addressed.

In the incinerator deal, Carroll must provide 40 percent of thedaily 1,500 ton maximum capacity (or 600 tons per day). We arecurrently producing around 250 tons daily. Where will thedifference come from? Trash production will likely increase betweennow and when the incinerator is running. But will it double?

The incinerator is supposed to generate a certain amount ofenergy from the trash that is burned. There are lots of statisticsabout how many BTUs can be generated, but the average number ofBTUs per pound of trash that is being quoted by incineratorproponents is statistically at the very top of what ispossible.

Revenue to pay off the incinerator construction costs and paythe cost of operation each year comes from only three sources: saleof ferrous metals collected from the ash after burning, electricitygenerated from burning trash and tip fees paid by trash companiesThe estimates being used for the first two of these income streamsare overly ambitious. If any one of these three income streams doesnot meet the proposed goals, which income stream can be increasedat will? Tip fees. It's as simple as that.

We won't be able to overcome the laws of physics and generatemore electricity per pound, and it is doubtful we'll have enoughtrash to burn. So, tip fees will have to be raised on trashcompanies to pay the incinerator bill. When trash companies havehigher tip fees, they pass that cost on to residents.

Why isn't anyone talking about this? I need to hear from mycounty government representatives about these issues. We can stillget out of this waste of spending. It might cost us a few millionnow, but that money will be worth it to eliminate the heavyfinancial burden Carroll County residents will likely carry formany years to come.

Dan Gallagher

Eldersburg

By Caroline Eader | Boulder Zero Waste Trips LLCJan. 10 -- In a Waste & Recycling News guest column (Nov. 28), Paul Gilman of Covanta Energy Corp. wants us to applaud the United States Congress for ending its composting program in the Henry Longfellow cafeteria. The cafeteria is using polystyrene containers which then go to a trash incinerator for processing. His argument is that this method of choosing single-use foodware and then burning it as "energy-from-waste" is better than that waste going to a landfill.The incinerator industry promotes a false belief that the only choices we have in handling our waste is to either burn it for energy or to bury it in a landfill. The existence of what is known as a waste-to-energy facility does not eliminate the need for a landfill. First, 10% to 15% of the waste stream cannot be incinerated and secondly, after burning there is a significant amount of ash (10% to 15% by volume, or about 30% by weight) which is still sent to a landfill. When Congress was sending food waste to a composting facility, it was turned into topsoil in 90 days -- neither incinerated or landfilled.

The statement that trash incineration "does not compete with composting, recycling or any program of waste reduction and reuse, but in fact complements these programs," as Gilman stated, is also misleading. This statement would have people believe only material which can´t be recycled is processed, but the truth is incinerator contracts do not exclude recyclable material from being incinerated. When I´ve asked industry representatives why they do not remove the recoverable material, they say, "It´s not my job."

If you read Covanta and Wheelabrator incinerator contracts, you´ll find that their job is to get BTUs from municipal solid waste (including plastic and paper) for energy recovery. Therefore, on one hand Gilman states Congress should implement a sustainable waste management system based on the U.S. EPA and the European Union 4R waste hierarchy, and on the other hand his company is not taking responsibility for waste reduction, reuse, recycling and composting prior to energy recovery.

Montgomery County, Md., with its recycling rate of 44% through its "integrated" recycling, composting, and use of a 16-year-old WTE facility illustrates this point perfectly: Maximal diversion rates are not met. There is a cheaper, more effective, more beneficial pathway for managing society´s discards: zero waste. Zero waste practices such as recycling, reuse and composting generate more than 10 times the number of jobs than both incinerators or landfills and reduce vast amounts of pollution. Cities with zero waste goals such as San Francisco (77%) and San Diego (68%) are achieving much higher diversion rates. Across the U.S. and Canada, more communities are adopting zero waste resolutions and implementing zero waste plans, and diversion rates are starting to rise.

San Francisco´s waste study analysis found that 90% of its waste stream is recyclable or compostable. This clearly shows that a community implementing a diversion goal of 75% would have substantially less to landfill than a community with an incinerator.

Additionally, the U.S. Energy Department has found that waste incineration is the most expensive way to generate electricity. This is not the example Congress should be setting, especially since electricity from burning garbage makes more carbon dioxide and mercury pollution per kilowatt hour than electricity from coal.

Covanta has branded its trash incinerators WTE facilities to secure taxpayer subsidies when in reality these facilities are highly inefficient and costly. Through its contract with the Northeast Maryland Waste Disposal Authority, which owns the Montgomery County trash incinerator, Covanta makes more than $20 million per year in operating fees and also receives a portion of the revenues earned from the electricity produced. Montgomery County residents and business owners should not find this surprising since they subsidize this facility by $30 million to $40 million per year through property tax fees.

The economically sound choice for any community should be to have maximized resource recovery (utilizing zero-waste practices) focused on landfill diversion and to decrease greenhouse gas emissions. This would substantially reduce the need for new landfills, while promoting long-term sustainable environmental and economic benefits. It would save energy and money, create jobs and eliminate thousands of tons of greenhouse gases being generated by our country´s landfills and trash incinerators.

By Garth Stapley

gstapley@modbee.com Monday, Jan. 09, 2012 Monday, Jan. 09, 2012 By Garth Stapley The Modesto Bee

MODESTO -- Garbage bills throughout Stanislaus County would shoot higher in coming months to stop a sudden financial hemorrhage at the garbage-burning plant owned by the county and Modesto. Higher garbage rates — estimated at up to $1.50 per month for homeowners initially, with a possible additional bump in the near future — also are needed because of new state air pollution laws, say county and Modesto officials.

Elected representatives from both agencies are expected today, in separate public meetings, to vote on pursuing a new contract with the garbage-burning plant's private operator.

That would set in motion higher bills for residents of Modesto and unincorporated areas. Because garbage haulers in the county's eight other cities also fuel the waste-to- energy plant, higher tipping fees are expected to result in garbage rate increases there as well. "Our residents are not going to be very happy," said John Lazar, mayor of Turlock, the county's second-largest city behind Modesto. "It's hard for families trying to get along. We in government need to be a little compassionate."

Modesto and the county own the plant, which is next to the county's landfill on Fink Road, and the agencies pay Covanta Stanislaus Inc. to run the plant. Covanta sells power generated by burning garbage to Pacific Gas & Electric Co. under a separate contract and shares proceeds with the city and county, which built up reserves worth more than $19 million as of a year ago.

When Covanta balked at signing a new deal with the agencies, their share of revenue plummeted under terms of a provisional contract with PG&E, and the agencies' account quickly took a nose dive to $13.5 million.

The agencies also fear having to pay as much as $4 million per year when the state's new emissions laws go into effect under so-called cap-and-trade rules.

Modesto and county negotiators worked out a tentative deal with Covanta, with radical changes. The company, which has zero exposure for "unforeseen circumstances" such as changes in state law, would assume 75 percent of the risk in exchange for all revenue from selling power, up from its 10 percent share.

To make up some of that loss, Modesto and the county would raise the plant's tipping fee, or what it charges haulers to dump waste, from $28 per ton to as much as $39 per ton, according to reports. That's what will drive up rates paid by homeowners, business owners and everyone else with a garbage bill.

Landfill a cheaper option? Besides selling electricity, a main idea behind burning trash is diverting waste from landfills. But jacking the plant's tipping fee to $39 per ton would exceed the $33-per-ton fee charged at the landfill next door — in theory driving more business toward the landfill because it's cheaper.

To fix that, Modesto and the county could subsidize the landfill, but their joint garbage account is being depleted quickly. They expect to lose up to $2 million more by the time a formal agreement with Covanta is signed.

An option is raising the landfill's tipping fee — in turn forcing yet higher bills paid by all customers. That potential increase was not factored into the county's estimate that a typical homeowner could pay 50 cents to $1.50 more per month, according to a county report.

"We're going to do our very best to keep them at the lowest level possible," said Sonya Harrigfeld, the county's environmental resources director, who is on the agencies' negotiating team.

Modesto Councilman Dave Geer said he is pleased Modesto would reduce its liability, but he said he wants to see solid information on how the deal would affect garbage rates.

The agencies collected more than $13 million in the past fiscal year, but spent more than $16.6 million. Most of that was a service fee to Covanta, which has operated the plant since it began operating in 1988.

The county and Modesto would be required to continue delivering 243,300 tons of waste per year to the plant, with a price break for bringing more. Also, the county, which owns the adjacent landfill, would charge $26 per ton to dispose of the plant's ash, up from the $16 per ton rate.

Other terms would prevent the agencies from transporting garbage elsewhere, and would prevent Covanta from "pursuing more lucrative contracts with other agencies," although the company could market excess capacity under some conditions.

Other cities conceivably could haul their waste elsewhere to save money. But all agencies in California are required to divert substantial amounts from landfills and the plant provides attractive diversion credits.

Chris Vierra, mayor of Ceres, the county's third-largest city, said: "I understand they have to make ends meet, but we're very concerned. We'll have to weigh our options."

If approved today in separate county and city meetings, the consulting firm of Sidley Austin LLP would be paid $110,000 to broker the new contract. The company already has been paid about $52,700, a report says, for help with the draft deal.

Bee staff writer Ken Carlson contributed to this report.

The Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors and the Modesto City Council meet today at 9 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., respectively. Both meet in the basement chamber at Tenth Street Place, 1010 10th St., Modesto.

County agenda: http://is.gd/wBAQI9.

City agenda: http://is.gd/j5n5BD.

Bee staff writer Garth Stapley can be reached at gstapley@modbee.com or (209) 578-2390.