The state legislature has rung the death knell for trash-to-energy in Connecticut.
The burning of the Nutmeg State’s garbage for electricity likely will continue in some form as environmental officials develop a plan for future waste disposal, but the days where two-thirds of Connecticut’s trash gets sent to six trash-to-energy plants throughout the state are fading away.
Rising from the ashes are new plans developed by the Department of Energy & Environmental Protection to increase the recycling rate from 25 percent to 60 percent by 2024. How the rest of the trash is disposed still is a point of contention; the legislature is calling on DEEP to utilize some yet-to-be-determined technology with greater fiscal and environmental benefits.
“We don’t want to set trash on fire anymore,” said Macky McCleary, DEEP deputy commissioner. “Recycling has much more value to the system than incineration does.”
As the 2 million tons of garbage currently burned in Connecticut’s trash-to-energy plants shrinks, the six facilities will be forced to rethink their economic viability, which already is in jeopardy as the rise of low-cost natural gas power plants has limited the amount of money garbage plants receive for their electricity.
The legislation calls on the state-run Mid-Connecticut Project plant in Hartford to be switched to a private operator, which will likely convert the building into an organics recycling facility and for other uses with the yet-to-be-determined technology DEEP considers. Meantime, New Jersey-based Covanta, which operates three trash-to-energy facilities in Connecticut, has started discussions to cease burning in Wallingford. The Hartford and Wallingford facilities currently handle about 940,000 tons of waste.
“We support the state’s goals to increase recycling, and we hope to help,” Covanta spokesman James Regan said. “We will be an extremely important part of waste disposal in the state.”
All these are long-term discussions, though, as Connecticut transitions to that 60 percent recycling rate by 2024. This leaves room for the six plants, which currently handle 64 percent of Connecticut’s waste, to maintain the status quo for the medium term; but the fact remains state government has chosen a waste policy that moves away from trash-to-energy.
“We are very much eight to 10 years away from wholesale changes in how we deal with garbage in Connecticut,” said Tom Kirk, president and CEO of the agency formerly called the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority.
The law changing the state’s focus to recycling and new technology also renamed the CRRA as the Materials Innovation & Recycling Authority. MIRA will be a regional organization instead of a statewide one, and it will no longer be focused on trash-to-energy. Instead, it will try to develop cost-effective and environmentally-friendly trash disposal options for its 51 member towns in central Connecticut.
In addition to trash-to-energy, CRRA played an important role in controlling the cost of waste tipping fees throughout the state. As CRRA socialized its transportation costs around its member towns, its typical $62-$65 per ton tipping fee was seen as an industry cap. If a private hauler charged more, its municipal customers would likely switch to CRRA.
“If we weren’t here, then tipping fees would be north of $70,” Kirk said.
MIRA’s trash disposal services will continue, at least in the short term, but may change as DEEP revises the state’s Solid Waste Management Plan, something that is sorely needed as the plan hasn’t been updated since 2006, Kirk said.
“That policy renovation will answer a lot of questions for the authority,” Kirk said. “That is a policy determination that needs to happen.”
As Connecticut increases its recycling rate, the need for MIRA to set a tipping fee ceiling will be less important, McCleary said. Recycled goods have more value than discarded trash, so as recycling increases, the value of the waste stream will rise and lower tipping fees.
DEEP will launch a new initiative called Recycle CT this year to market the need for recycling, McCleary said. The state also has passed laws requiring manufacturers and consumers of mattresses and paint to recycle those goods; programs for carpets and batteries are also planned.
To further increase recycling, the state will issue a request for proposals for ideas on what to do with the Mid-Connecticut Project, which started its life as a coal plant. The facility now has a recycling component, and the hope is new technology can transform the trash-to-energy plant into a major part of the state’s recycling system, McCleary said.
The proposals for the Mid-Connecticut Project must be evaluated by 2017.
When Connecticut first undertook trash-to-energy in the 1970s as its primary way of disposing of waste, the state was the forerunner of a movement that never caught on in the United States but is popular in European countries like Denmark and Germany, McCleary said.
While Connecticut disposes of 67 percent of its trash at in-state and out-of-state trash-to-energy plants, only 7 percent of U.S. waste is disposed in such a manner. Landfilling remains America’s most popular disposal method, accounting for 64 percent of the national waste stream.
Even as Connecticut was once progressive, Kirk said, the time has come to start using another method; still breaking from the popular U.S. landfilling method and focusing efforts on maximizing recycling.
“The trash-to-energy technology is now 30 years old,” Kirk said. “The desire is to treat our waste less as waste and more as useful material.”
Read more
Bill aims to force action on stalled Hartford trash plant project
