Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 9, 1992 TAG: 9202090115
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: FAIRLAWN LENGTH: Long
TRASH INCINERATOR CONCEPT HEATS UP
Good ol' county dumps - municipal sanitary landfills, in bureaucratese - are becoming passe. They're too expensive and nobody wants them even near their back yard.In solid-waste management circles, high-tech incinerators are one of the hot new items on the block. And the Radford Army Ammunition Plant wants to be the first to have one that burns household and hazardous garbage. It's called "Incinerator 2000" - and for a reason. Arsenal officials believe it would take at least eight years to put all the pieces together and get everybody signed up.
Plans are sketchy right now, but they're convinced it would solve waste-disposal problems for the arsenal and neighboring localities.
Baked trash a la New River Valley.
It won't be an easy recipe, however. Major obstacles include getting a few federal laws changed, putting $75 million up front, obtaining half a dozen permits and getting regional cooperation among governments.
Although some believe incinerators are crucial to handling America's growing garbage pile, others damn them as environmental disasters that merely shift the problem from the ground to the air.
Arsenal officials are testing the waters before spending a lot of time and money on planning, in case the idea sinks. They've presented it to local officials, who have listened with mild interest. They've run it by Sen. Charles Robb, D-Va., and Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, both of whom seem to like the concept.
"I think this thing really needs political backing," said plant commander Lt. Col. Dennis Duplantier. And forgoing a grand announcement or big news conference, the arsenal has begun a quiet public relations and education campaign.
"I think it is important that this information get out," said plant manager E.K. "Skip" Hurley, a vice president of Hercules Inc., which runs the plant. "There's always going to be a difference of opinion."
Duplantier, Hurley and two arsenal engineers acknowledge that the plan still is wrinkled in a number of places. "We haven't ironed that out yet," they said in a recent interview, or "We don't know all the details yet."
Here is what they do know:
The arsenal now burns propellant waste three ways: Scrap propellant is burned in an incinerator; impure propellant is burned openly in flash pans; and other items tainted with propellant powder such as worker clothes, lumber and containers are burned in open pits.
The arsenal pays $27.5 million a year to get rid of its waste - including replacing or upgrading the propellant incinerator to meet federal law.
Also, the state Air Pollution Control Board someday will ban the arsenal's practice of open burning.
The waste propellant is classified as hazardous because it is explosive. It is best not to bury or transport it because "you never know when it could go off," said an air board staffer.
Out in the civilian world, New River Valley governments are searching for the best and most inexpensive way to get rid of municipal garbage.
Arsenal officials think they have a solution for everyone. The localities - Montgomery, Giles, Floyd and Pulaski counties and Radford - estimate that they generate about 375 tons of garbage a day. The arsenal produces about 20 to 25 tons of burnable waste daily .
The arsenal might mix it all together and then burn it. Or it might burn the household trash to generate enough heat to burn the propellant at 1,600 degrees.
That's one wrinkle.
The Environmental Protection Agency has set a goal for hazardous-waste burners to destroy 99.99 percent of the toxic material. Critics say the problem with mixing the two types of waste, or "cocktailing," is maintaining a constant temperature long enough to thoroughly burn the garbage.
Household trash is so varied - food, paper, metals and plastics - that keeping a constant temperature is difficult.
"Once you start mixing the two, you run into a lot of technical problems that largely cannot be solved," said Stephen Lester, a scientist with Arlington-based Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Wastes.
The hodgepodge of household trash creates another problem: air pollution. Sulfur dioxides, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide and lead - all commonly produced in burning almost anything - are regulated by federal law.
Other specific toxins, including dioxins and furans, two of the known byproducts of burning municipal solid waste, are regulated by the state.
But Lester and others claim that burning cans of Raid, Styrofoam cups and other junk together creates new - even unknown - compounds.
Arsenal officials stressed that Incinerator 2000 would be built under hazardous-waste specifications, requiring the best available technology to control pollution. Further, it would burn only arsenal hazardous waste.
"We have no intention of having this be a hazardous-waste incinerator for any other outside waste," Hurley said. Federal law prohibits private operators of federal facilities from accepting outside hazardous waste, he noted.
The localities probably would prevent that from happening anyway, Duplantier said. "We see a community board to operate it. We may not even run it."
But that's another detail to be worked out.
Another is ash, one of the most troublesome results of burning rubbish. Incinerator 2000 would generate about 41,000 tons of hazardous ash yearly that would have to be buried in a hazardous-waste landfill.
The federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act bans cocktailing mostly because it generates more hazardous waste than necessary, said EPA spokeswoman Susan Lamont. And finding dump sites for hazardous waste is one of the hottest political issues going.
"Right now we're making hazardous waste [including ash] and we're taking it to Indiana's back yard," and Ohio's and Michigan's, Duplantier said.
One possibility would be to use the ash as building material for roads, an approach used in some parts of the world but not widely tested. Another would be to build a hazardous-waste dump as part of a proposed landfill in north Pulaski County, Duplantier said.
The New River Resource Authority board - handling trash for Pulaski County and Radford - has not agreed to even join the project, much less bury the ash.
As for the New River Valley's recycling efforts, Incinerator 2000 could include a front-end phase to separate and sort bottles, metals, aluminum and so on, but that has not been worked out.
Environmental questions aside, the bottom line may decide the fate of Incinerator 2000. It's costly.
Localities likely would have to sell bonds in an amount based on the volume of trash each produced - from $2.5 million for Floyd County to $25 million for Montgomery County.
The arsenal would pay $27.5 million up front. Arsenal officials hope to get a slice of the peace dividend for the project, which they say could be an economic-development boost.
To keep the incinerator running, localities would be charged about $85 per ton. As a waste-to-energy facility - steam is produced to run an electricity-generating turbine - the incinerator would sell power to the arsenal to cover remaining costs.
Localities would pay more than they do now, but substantially less than what they'll face in 30 years. Could Incinerator 2000 solve their problems?
"They like it," Duplantier said, but "no one can say OK because someone has to come up with the money."
But valley officials say it's not simply a question of money. They want a lot more information about the project - the hazards, the benefits, the cost.
"Given the lack of landfills and the cost of landfills, it may be as good as any other means," said Giles County Administrator Kenneth Weaver, but the initial expense is daunting. Giles now spends $400,000 a year on solid-waste disposal.
Jerry White, member of the resource authority and Pulaski County chairman, wondered about the health and environmental problems.
"Depending on what experts you talk to . . . it's such a mixed bag of ideas on how safe or unsafe the whole incineration process really is," he said. "I guess I would have to say I'm against it until shown or proven that I should be for it."
This is not the first time valley officials have pondered the idea of incineration.
In 1980, they studied the idea of a regional waste-to-energy facility. But several of the industries that would have purchased the steam or electricity closed.
Seven years later, Montgomery and Floyd counties undertook another study, while Pulaski County and Radford's joint solid-waste authority conducted its own study. Both concluded they did not have enough garbage to make it work.
In Montgomery County, public opposition reached a boiling point before the board even thought about taking a vote, Jablonski said.
This time, there is bound to be some of the same citizen heat.
Pete Castelli, a Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Wastes representative in Floyd County, said he already has received a few phone calls about the arsenal's idea.
"Who says bigger is better?" he said. "It's a very bad idea."
First, landfills still are needed for the ash and as backup dumps in case incinerators shut down or malfunction.
And second, to be cost-effective, incinerators have to burn huge amounts of garbage. That flies in the face of recycling and source reduction, Castelli said.
John Lester, a state Air Pollution Control Board inspector in Roanoke, said he thinks Incinerator 2000 is a good idea. Emissions from burning propellant would be monitored and controlled, whereas now regulators can't measure the pollution from open burning, and don't even know how bad it might be.
Waste Facts\ \ As of April 1991, 136 waste-to-energy plants in 36 states were handling nearly 16 percent (29 million tons) of the estimated 185 million tons of trash generated in the United States./ / Nearly 100 facilities in the U.S. are currently in various stages of planning, construction or permitting. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that by the year 2000, more than 300 plants will handle one-forth of the nation's solid waste.