Tulsa World editorial talks trash

[RecycleMichael]

City officials should be talking trash
By DAVID AVERILL Editorial Pages Editor
2/25/2007

For 20 years the Walter B. Hall Energy Recovery Facility, better known as the trash-to-energy plant, has been doing exactly what it was touted to do. It has been burning most of Tulsa's commercial and residential trash, reducing its volume by 90 percent before the resulting ash is buried in a landfill. In the process it produces steam energy which is sold to the Sunoco Inc. refinery to offset part of the cost of the operation.

The burn plant, which was retrofitted with smokestack scrubbers in the late 1990s, exceeds Environmental Protection Agency clean-air requirements and has no impact on groundwater. Now, however, the facility's future is in question. The $180 million debt incurred to build it will be paid off as of April 30. The arrangement between the city and the owner-operator, which directs the bulk of the city's solid waste to the facility, is set to expire at the same time.

City officials have shown no inclination to discuss some kind of continued arrangement with owner-operator, New York-based CIT. Meanwhile, a proposed ordinance quietly put before the City Council would redirect the flow of commercial trash, which the owners say is crucial to the plant's economic viability.

The city ought not to walk away from its $180 million investment in the trash-to-energy plant without some public discussion. The only real knock against the burn plant is that it has been expensive. Trash pickup rates in Tulsa are higher than those in towns that landfill all of their trash.

The disparity is due in large part to debt service on the bonds that paid for construction of the plant. It costs about $55 per ton to dump trash at the burn plant. But 45 percent of that goes to repay the debt on the west-side facility. Another 45 percent is the tipping fee, or revenue to the facility. The remaining 10 percent goes to other solid waste-related operations, such as the city's twice-yearly collections of household hazardous materials.

Cost of dumping at the burn plant could be made a whole lot more competitive after the debt is paid off. Although the city of Tulsa paid to build the plant, which opened in 1986, it does not own it. The city sought that arrangement for two reasons: to avoid possible liability issues and because a private firm could build it for less with the help of tax credits.

CIT was the original financier. The original operator was Ogden-Martin Systems of Tulsa. A public trust, the Tulsa Authority for the Recovery of Energy, or TARE, was created as the city's funding vehicle. Ogden-Martin was later acquired by another firm, Covanta, which went bankrupt. At that point, after the facility was shut down for about three months, CIT stepped in as a more hands-on owner.

To understand why the trash-to-energy plant, even with the rather odd-ball financing scheme, was the best solution to a pressing problem, it is important to recall the situation that existed in the mid-1980s. From 1975 to 1985, half of the 26 landfills in the Tulsa area closed, either because they were full or because they did not meet health requirements. Most of the remaining 13 landfills were small ones, projected to fill up within two years.

No new landfills opened from 1980 to 1985 and none appeared likely to open in the foreseeable future. Neighborhood groups had successfully opposed permitting of new landfills. It reached the point that if two of the 13 remaining landfills closed the city would have nowhere to dispose of its trash in seven months' time. The situation has eased over the years, with the permitting of a couple of large landfills. But at the time there appeared to be little choice other than the trash-to-energy plant, which would conserve precious landfill space. And it has been a success, reducing the amount of landfilled trash by about 7 million tons.

The burn plant is capable of handling 340,000 tons of trash a year. That includes 140,000 tons of residential trash and 200,000 tons of commercial trash. CIT officials say the plant must operate at full capacity to generate the amount of steam required to fulfill its contract with Sunoco. There are at least two other competitors for the commercial trash that now goes to the burn plant. Waste Management, a local firm, is the second-largest commercial trash hauler and also operates the Quarry Landfill in northeast Tulsa County. It has a contract with the city, through 2018, that directs all trash that does not go to the burn plant, about 70 tons a year, to its Quarry Landfill. American Waste Control Inc., a national firm, is the largest hauler of commercial trash and it also operates a landfill west of Sand Springs.

Waste Management and American Waste Control obviously would prefer to haul to their own landfills, and to compete for the trash that now goes to the burn plant. However, if the city lets its arrangement with CIT simply expire, Waste Management's contract might require that all of the city's trash go to the Quarry Landfill through 2018.

If CIT's contract is allowed to expire the firm has limited options. It could walk away from its asset and the millions it's spent over the years to maintain and modernize it. Or it could compete for the business of the independent haulers and attempt to import enough trash from outside the city to keep the plant operating at capacity. Many of the independent residential haulers, who operate in a coalition called Tulsa Refuse Inc., and a number of the smaller commercial haulers, prefer to use the burn plant because it is nearby, convenient to use and all-weather.

With the end of the CIT contract just weeks away there has been virtually no public discussion of solid waste management issues. While the city does not own the trash-to-energy plant it does have a $180 million investment in it. The city should not walk away from that investment without open discussion. The discussion ought to include all of the players, including the haulers, landfill operators and trash-to-energy facility operators. This shouldn't be done on the Q.T.

[waterboy]

Wasn't there a thread where these very issues were discussed here recently?

[RecycleMichael]

Kinda...

http://www.tulsanow.org/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5290&SearchTerms=trash,energy