Waste Not! Carroll

By Shawn Connell

In his most recent Letter to the Editor, Mike Evans (Carroll County Director of Public Works) tries to argue that those who are against the proposed incinerator are using faulty logic and misleading comparisons. He urges the public to keep the debate “focused on apples-to-apples, not fruit salad.” Pomiferous analogies aside, it is Mr. Evans who is being misleading.

To imply, as Mr. Evans often does, that the incinerator will generate electricity is disingenuous at best. The amount of energy produced by an incinerator is considerably less than the amount saved by recycling. Manufacturing a ton of news paper from trees takes 11,699 kilowatt hours (kwh). If that ton of paper is burned, it can produce 1,875 kwh of electricity to sell. That's a loss of 9,824 kwh. Incinerating paper wastes 9,824 kwh per ton. If that ton of paper is recycled, a new ton of paper can be made using only 6,442 kwh. That's a savings of 5,257 kwh. The same is true with plastic and metal. For example, plastic soda bottles produce only 2,403 kwh per ton when burned yet require 9,619 kwh/ton to make.

Evans claims that the primary by-product of burning trash is an ash like substance that is not toxic, and thus he plans to dump it in Carroll County’s public landfill. This sounds like a risky proposition when you consider that the few remaining other incinerators in the region consider their ash to be toxic waste. For example, the Dickerson incinerator in Montgomery County treat theirs with a bath of chemicals before paying to have it hauled to a toxic waste dump out of state. With environmental standards continuing to get tougher, the price of disposing this toxic ash will only increase for us.

Evans is quick with statistics that make the incinerator out to be a nearly foolproof solution to managing our county’s solid waste. But even a fool can see that his arguments rest on some pretty improbable assumptions. Like the assumption that outside jurisdictions are going to pay us $67.04 per ton of processed waste (in Year 1), not including their transportation costs. Or the assumption that there will be no future environmental regulations that would require expensive retrofitting of the incinerator. The truth is, there isn't any way to know what the next 30 years hold - to pretend otherwise is dangerous and unwise

There is one thing that Evans is right about though in his letter – those engaging in this debate should stick to the facts. With billions of dollars in untested technology at stake, there is no need for our government officials to be coy – Mr. Evans should drop the fruity metaphors and start following his own advice.