We couldn’t agree more with this editorial that decries the current idea to expend a large sum of money on unproven technology to solve the garbage problem in Sacramento.
In virtually all public service areas, rather than being the innovator—a role played more sensibly by cash flush municipalities with deep pockets—our region should consider those tried ant true ideas already proven successful in other areas.
An excerpt from the Sacramento Bee editorial.
“In unmistakable terms this week, the Sacramento City Council ordered its staff to hold off on an ambitious but ambiguous plan to partner with a private firm to turn city garbage into electricity.
“Council members were right to postpone this deal. Too many important questions remain unanswered.
“Chief among the questions is a basic one: Will this process work as its proponents claim it will?
“Under the deal being negotiated, a private firm would build a plant to vaporize city garbage and use the synthetic gases created in that process to generate electricity. The city would have to deliver at least 2,100 tons of municipal waste a week as feedstock for the plant.
“This futuristic waste-to-energy proposal, which the city has been considering for many months, always has had a kind of too-good-to-be-true quality to it. It contemplates turning what has been an expensive burden for cities, garbage, into a potential gold mine, energy.
“Skeptics have raised serious doubts about whether the plan is technologically feasible. Nothing exactly like it has ever been done before, certainly not on the scale Sacramento contemplates. Critics say "plasma arc gasification," as the new technology is called, is a promising but unproven technology, particularly in the municipal waste arena.”
