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This Bud's For Biogas's Wiser Fans

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By TOM JACKSON

The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 1, 2008

Anyone who believes the only thing beer has to do with recycling and renewability is the speed with which it races through human plumbing and back into the ecosystem hasn't been paying sufficiently close attention.

And in that failure, they have missed yet another argument in favor of the installation - abundantly restricted - of a landfill that would do for east Pasco what a similar arrangement has been doing for years for the city of Houston and will, by the end of 2009, be doing for the east Texas branch of what was, until recently, America's biggest brewer.

To wit: Produce an inexhaustible supply of green energy for a region populated by folks eager to loosen the grip of crude oil.

Wednesday, Anheuser-Busch declared its plan to power its Houston brewery, in substantial part, with methane delivered by a 6-mile pipeline attached at the other end to a landfill designed to produce and capture biogas.

The agreement with Phoenix-based Allied Waste Industries doubles, to two, the number of clients for its McCarty Road Landfill. The other is a local utility that couldn't use all the gas the 300-acre garbage-cooker produced; the rest, formerly burned without recovery, soon will be diverted to the brewery to fire its operations - enough to power 25,000 homes.

Talk about putting the "wise" back in Budweiser.

County Holds The Hammer

Such information will be useful next year, following - presumably - the Florida Department of Environmental Protection's approval of Angelo's Aggregate Materials' application to construct and operate a bioreactor landfill in the wilderness a couple of miles southeast of Dade City. Even with the DEP permit, Angelo's will require Pasco County's cooperation both as a legal (zoning) and practical matter.

The first hurdle gives the county staggering power to shape virtually everything Angelo's opponents find repugnant - the size and height of the landfill, what will be allowed in it, where the refuse will come from and so on. Even then, without an agreement on tipping fees, the county is under no obligation to direct haulers to dump anywhere but the incinerator in Shady Hills.

Still, as the Budweiser-Allied Waste alliance indicates, working out the details would be a win-win-win: for Pasco taxpayers (who wouldn't have to foot the bill for an incinerator expansion destined for obsolescence before it begins), for Angelo's (which expects to operate at a profit; no sin in that) while expanding its payroll, and for anyone who embraces the idea that new sources of renewable energy are essential for the happiness and well-being of the nation and its composite localities.

Red Herrings By The Netful

With the recent agitation stirred by breeze-testing state senators with Pasco interests, we can anticipate that any approval by DEP will include exacting standards for engineering, environmental protocol (including precautions against injury to nearby pristine waters) and monitoring.

The trick, then, will be in overcoming the public's sour perception, fueled in no small part by red herrings (They'll take garbage from other counties! They'll make garbage pyramids 300 feet high!) from anti-landfill alarmists.

Against that, Angelo's reps must be resourceful. Maybe they should bring cases of Bud cooked with biogas to the hearings.

Tom Jackson can be reached at (813) 948-4219.

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