TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Cache Trash, Or Burn It To Ash?

ADVERTISEMENT

By NICOLA M. WHITE, The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 21, 2007

DADE CITY - The day Pasco County commissioners opened the multimillion-dollar Shady Hills waste-to-energy plant, protesters lined the streets.

They carried signs, wore costumes and rolled a makeshift coffin up to the entrance. One activist even reportedly went on a hunger strike to protest the effects the plant would have on the environment.

For Commissioner Ann Hildebrand, voting to open the garbage-burning facility was one of the toughest decisions of her tenure.

'There were people who lived in the community in Shady Hills and environmentalists that came out from everywhere, but I said, 'What are the options?' I couldn't find a barge big enough to put it garbage on and float it out in the Gulf.'

Sixteen years later, as commissioners consider expanding the waste-to-energy plant and a private company vies to build a landfill outside Dade City, environmental concerns again are at the forefront when it comes to dealing with Pasco County's growing trash problem.

But unlike the protests in 1991, the most vocal group of citizen activists this time is actually in favor of incineration.

That raises the question of which is better - an incinerator or a landfill - for the environment.

The answer depends on whom you ask.

Some say neither option is good.

'Once you've created waste, there's nothing that's really safe to do with it,' said Monica Wilson, international co-coordinator of the Global Alliance for Incineration Alternatives, a group that opposes both landfills and incinerators. 'One of the major solutions that people need to address is figuring out how to reduce waste as much as possible and maximize recycling and composting.'

In the late 1980s and early '90s, when Pasco County officials debated what to do with the county's trash, everyone had ideas about what to do with the garbage.

'They wanted goats to eat the garbage,' Hildebrand said. 'They wanted to put garbage on a conveyer. There were all these wild and crazy ideas - anything but a dump-dump or the burning of garbage. People were scared to death.'

Although commissioners recently have discussed ways to improve the county's dismal recycling rate, Hildebrand said she isn't sure recycling alone could solve the county's trash problems.

Enter Angelo's Aggregate Materials, a private company that operates a small construction debris landfill on the north side of Enterprise Road, outside Dade City. Angelo's has purchased hundreds of acres of land in the area and has applied to the state Department of Environmental Protection for permits to build a 90-acre landfill across the street from its current facility. Although the permit application is for 90 acres, the landfill eventually could expand to hundreds of acres.

Backers of the plan praise the proposed facility's new technology and the savings it could bring to the county. They also contend that anti-landfill activists are largely using 'not in my backyard,' or NIMBY, arguments to stir up opposition.

'We feel our alternative is going to save taxes and save the environment,' said project manager John Arnold.

Opponents, who have plastered bumper stickers and banners all over east Pasco County, decry the landfill's location - near the environmentally protected Green Swamp and the Hillsborough River - and its threat to groundwater and property values.

Instead of allowing a private company to operate a landfill, those opponents, most of who live in east Pasco, argue the county should spend millions of dollars to expand the waste-to-energy plant in north-central Pasco.

Carl Roth, spokesman for the group, Protectors of Florida's Legacy, said it wasn't easy for landfill opponents to come to that conclusion. When you're choosing between a landfill or a waste-to-energy plant, you are basically asking, 'Would you rather drink the pollution, i.e., with a landfill, or would you rather breathe the pollution, i.e., with a waste-to-energy plant?'

Roth maintains a county-owned facility would do a better job of looking out for the well-being of Pasco residents, as opposed to a profit-driven company running a landfill.

Not so, says Dominic Iafrate, vice president of Angelo's, who argues recycling would be encouraged with his landfill because the cleaner the garbage is, the cleaner the compost that comes from it. Angelo's officials have said they want to sell the compost produced from the breakdown of organic garbage, such as food waste.

Iafrate's landfill technology also calls for capturing methane gases produced during the decomposition process and turning it into electricity. To protect the groundwater, he says his landfill will have a double-liner layer underneath the garbage.

In its public relations campaign, Angelo's has consistently raised concerns about the environmental impact of incinerators and waste-to-energy plants as a way to boost its landfill case.

Waste-to-energy plants work like this: They take garbage, burn it, turn it into ash and bury the ash in an adjacent landfill. Turning the trash into ash reduces the bulk of the garbage to a fraction of its original size.

In its 16 years of operation, the Shady Hills waste-to-energy plant has never been out of compliance with state emissions regulations, DEP records show. In Shady Hills, 99 percent of all toxins are captured by scrubbers in the smokestacks, said Beth Leytham, spokeswoman for Covanta, the company that runs the county-owned facility.

That doesn't mean the process is without its critics.

While technological advances have been made with waste-to energy plants to reduce the amount of toxins that are released into the air, the so-called 'scrubbers' in plants' smoke stacks don't completely erase the problem, said Wilson of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives.

'They can't capture all of the air pollution,' she said. 'No matter what, air pollution will continue to be a major problem. They have these devices that reduce the air pollution and concentrate the toxins and the ash, but it's trading out one problem for the other.'

'Ironically you may end up with less dirty air but more dirty ash that ends up in the ground in a landfill.'

Researcher Michael Messano contributed to this report. Reporter Nicola M. White can be reached at (813) 779-4613 or nwhite1@tampatrib.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT