Waste Not! Carroll

By Mike Evans 

From the Carroll County Times 5/11/10

In response to the May 1 letter to the editor entitled "incinerator is a waste of energy," I am an advocate for the Carroll/Frederick waste-to-energy facility.

Fact-based debate is at the core of our social being. For any of us to make informed decisions, we need to have reliable, fact-based data that goes deeper than a headline.

A waste-to-energy plant is a plant that burns garbage in order to generate electricity. The electric grid receives electricity from power generators using a variety of fuels, including nuclear, coal, fossil fuel, wind, solar and garbage.

The basic argument is whether recycling programs are better off when there is a waste-to-energy plant vs. a landfill. The Environmental Protection Agency says, "Recycling turns materials that would otherwise become waste into valuable resources." In the case of traditional recyclables there are clearly technologies to reform the material into a "valuable resource."

The rest of the garbage goes to the landfill, where it will be allowed to rot for several hundred years, giving off methane and its own liquor (lechate) that must be treated the same as sewage. A waste-to-energy plant takes the garbage segment of the waste stream and converts it to energy (a valuable resource).

The Frederick/Carroll facility is intended to process only the waste remaining after recycling. Communities that have waste-to-energy plants tend to have higher recycling rates than those without.

The letter to the editor implies that counties with waste-to-energy plants depend on their use of ash as a landfill cover material to sustain their high recycling rate. Not true.

Harford County has the highest recycling rate in Maryland. They also burn their waste and produce power for Aberdeen Proving Grounds. Harford's most recent reported recycling rate is 58.64 percent. Without ash, their recycling rate is 43.38 percent. Montgomery County's rate is 40.84 percent without ash. By comparison, Carroll County's recycling rate is 32.85 percent. Why the difference? Part of it is a very high recovery rate for metal from the waste-to-energy process. Metal passes through the furnace and is separated from the ash for recycling.

The writer errs when he claims that coal is a renewable resource. Once burned, coal is ash and more has to be mined to burn. Trash, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, is a renewable resource. It reinvents itself every week at curbside.

Mike Evans

Westminster

The writer is director of the Carroll County Department of Public Works.