Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 22, 1992 TAG: 9202220118
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
BOUCHER SEEKS STUDY MONEY FOR INCINERATOR
Incinerator 2000 is just a concept right now, chock full of assumptions and "fuzzy" estimates.But further study could turn the Radford Army Ammunition Plant's proposal for a regional trash burner into a real solution for the New River Valley.
Montgomery County, which generates half of all garbage in the New River Valley, would be an essential partner in the project.
County Administrator Betty Thomas said after a meeting Friday with arsenal officials and Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, that the county is still pursing all its options "carefully and cautiously."
The Board of Supervisors will likely meet at a special meeting in the next month to discuss those options, she said.
Andrew Kegley, chairman of the Wythe County Board of Supervisors, asked what localities should do while the project is being studied.
"Some of us don't have time to wait," he said. With only two years left in its landfill, Wythe County is planning to build a costly 60 acre landfill.
Kegley hit on a dilemma that plagues other localities, as well. If they opt now for Incinerator 2000 and it doesn't pan out, they're stuck without a place to dump their trash.
"I have to find $50,000," Boucher told local government officials and arsenal representatives.
That would pay for a study to fine-tune the arsenal's outline for the project and lay out the complex issues involved.
The arsenal has approached New River Valley and other localities with the idea of building a $75 million incinerator to handle about 400 tons of trash daily.
Mixing the valley's solid waste with the arsenal's hazardous waste, the incinerator would be the first of its kind, perhaps in the world.
None of the localities have agreed to the idea, which remains riddled with questions and concerns.
Col. Richard Johns of the Army Corps of Engineers Norfolk district said his staff - including environmental planners, engineers and designers - could do the work for that amount of money in two months time.
Others at the meeting suggested that a variety of consultants and groups be involved in the study.
"I think we're all in agreement that a study is the next step, it's just a question of who's going to conduct it and who's going to pay for it," Boucher said at the conclusion of the two-hour meeting at Virginia Tech's Donaldson Brown Center.
He also suggested that an informal committee, with a representative from each locality and from the arsenal, be set up to coordinate the study.
Friday's meeting had been scheduled for the arsenal, but Army policy prohibits news reporters from accompanying politicians on Army property during an election year. Boucher aids failed to win an exception to the policy, so the meeting was moved to Tech.
As a waste-to-energy facility, the incinerator would produce steam, or steam and electricity, that the arsenal would buy.
Estimated fees would be $66 a ton, rising to about $72 over 20 years, about on par with the cost of dumping trash in landfills under stricter environmental rules.
Some New River Valley citizens already have opposed the idea, charging that incinerators are an untested technology that simply shift environmental problems from the land to the air.
Arsenal officials stressed that Incinerator 2000 could be a way to solve future waste-disposal needs of the plant and the entire valley.
"We're not trying to push our problems off on the community," plant commander Lt. Col. Dennis Duplantier said.
Even if the project fails, he said, the arsenal would possibly offer land to the localities for a regional incinerator strictly for municipal solid waste. The arsenal could use the steam and burn it's solid waste there, he said.
"Let me say at the outset, I've taken no position on the arsenal's idea, except to say it's an interesting idea," said Boucher, who will likely run for re-election this year.
One major obstacle to the project is whether the ash - about 146,000 tons a year - would be considered hazardous. Under current federal law, ash from Incinerator 2000 would be hazardous because the Army's scrap propellant to be burned there is classified as hazardous.
Boucher outlined the federal legal obstacles concerning the ash, all of which he said probably could be overcome or changed:
Hazardous waste from a non-defense source cannot be stored or disposed of on Army property. The ash would have to be shipped elsewhere. Currently, there are no hazardous waste dumps in Virginia or close by.
The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act could prohibit the mixing of municipal garbage with hazardous waste, called "cocktailing."
Boucher said that, in a preliminary review of the law, his office determined that the law does not specifically ban cocktailing.
Under federal Superfund laws, the localities - as generators of the hazardous ash - would be liable for any environmental problems associated with the ash.
E.K. "Skip" Hurley, vice president of Hercules Inc. which runs the arsenal plant, said the scrap propellant the arsenal would burn is hazardous only by definition because it's flammable. Once burned, the hazardous properties are destroyed, he said.
He and other arsenal officials seemed confident they could get federal approval to classify the propellant as non-hazardous. Then the incinerator's ash would be non-hazardous and a lot less troublesome to deal with.
One arsenal engineer who's worked on the plan for many months, Chip Batton, stressed the need to involve the public from the very start.
"We need to make sure the public understand what's going on, and be compassionate to their concerns," he said.