This editorial makes an excellent point. This is much too large a project to embrace without a serious study of all of the options.
Local leadership needs to treat this issue as seriously as it deserves.
Editorial: Why the rush to embrace plasma waste disposal?
Sacramento's council is in love with the technology, but questions need answers
Published 12:00 am PST Sunday, March 2, 2008
Wham. Bam. Boom.
With little notice or public outreach, the Sacramento City Council voted Tuesday to authorize negotiations with a single company on a plant to vaporize the city's solid waste.
Currently, the 146,000 tons of garbage that Sacramento generates yearly is trucked to a landfill near Sparks, Nev. – an embarrassing practice for a municipality that prides itself as a "green" city.
As this page has previously stated, California's capital needs to engage its citizens in a more sustainable plan of waste reduction and recovery. Unfortunately, the waste-to-energy plant the council is now exploring is hardly the product of a public engagement.
For several months, city staff and certain council members have become enamored with a single Space Age technology – plasma gasification. Such plants use an electrified gas, known as plasma, to create temperatures of 15,000 degrees Fahrenheit and convert waste into a mixture of gases – which can be used for energy – and slag that can be recycled or used for asphalt and concrete.
Plasma arcs have been used in research and industry for decades, but they haven't been deployed for large-scale waste disposal, at least here in the United States. Westinghouse Plasma Corp., which developed the technology and is a partner in the proposed Sacramento plant, has helped develop waste-to-energy plants in Japan, and one is under development near Tallahassee, Fla. But none is in full operation in the United States.
Because of this lack of track record, it is difficult to verify claims that gasification of city garbage would release no harmful emissions or generate more energy than it consumes. One thing is for certain: Such a privately built plant would not come "free." Any company that builds a $150 million facility is surely going to charge a tipping fee far higher than the $38.50 a ton the city now pays to truck waste over the Sierra.
Given the uncertainties, the council should have at least given some examination to the 10 other companies that responded to Sacramento's request for proposals. Yet at Tuesday's meeting, city staff offered little information about these rejected proposals, and council members didn't seek it. Councilwoman Lauren Hammond used part of her sales pitch for the project to sing part of the theme song from the TV show "The Jetsons." So much for due diligence.
