Canadian Incineration Presentation

Report on incin­er­a­tor pre­sen­ta­tion before con­fer­ence of Cana­di­an munic­i­pal offi­cials
by Mike Ewall, Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work & Zero Waste Canada

On Feb 12th, 2015, I pre­sent­ed at the Fed­er­a­tion of Cana­di­an Munic­i­pal­i­ties’ Sus­tain­able Com­mu­ni­ties Con­fer­ence in Lon­don, Ontario.  It was the first time they held a pan­el to present both sides of a polar­ized issue.  The ses­sion was well-attend­ed and well-pro­mot­ed.  It was titled “The Two Sided Coin: Nav­i­gat­ing Through Polar­ized Per­spec­tives.”  With­out any men­tion of incin­er­a­tion in the title, that’s what the entire pan­el was about.  The orga­niz­ers recruit­ed hard and got about 90-some peo­ple to attend, many of them local gov­ern­ment offi­cials from through­out Cana­da.  Many attend­ed, not know­ing it was all about incin­er­a­tion, and got quite an education.

Pan­elists were:

-John Foden Pres­i­dent, Cana­di­an Resource Recov­ery Coun­cil
-Mike Ewall Founder & Direc­tor, Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work / Advi­so­ry Board Mem­ber, Zero Waste Cana­da
-Peter Veiga Super­vi­sor, Waste Oper­a­tions, Waste Man­age­ment Ser­vices, Durham Region (build­ing new incin­er­a­tor in Ontario)
-Patri­cia Ross, Board Vice-Chair, Fras­er Val­ley Region­al District

They had us paired up, first two with com­pet­ing larg­er-lev­el per­spec­tives, and the last two with com­pet­ing local per­spec­tives.  We made sure we got to get the last word in each, as there was no Q&A time… just small dis­cus­sions at tables among which we circulated.

The pre­sen­ta­tion I gave is here, in PDF for­mat (con­tact us for PPTX):

First, the highlights:

* We shift­ed opin­ions a lot!  They did polls at the begin­ning and end.  At first, 9% sup­port­ed incin­er­a­tion, 23% opposed, 36% sup­port it under cer­tain con­di­tions and 32% don’t know enough to choose.  By the end, incin­er­a­tor sup­port­ers increased from 9% to 11%, while oppo­nents increased from 23% to 40%!  Those who sup­port under cer­tain con­di­tions dropped to from 36% to 30% and only 19% felt they still did­n’t know enough to choose.

* After the pan­el, they had us mix into the audi­ence’s tables and answer ques­tions.  I learned a lot between this and oth­er net­work­ing after­ward (even being flagged down lat­er in the air­port by a local offi­cial in Alber­ta who had many questions).

* In prepa­ra­tion, I put togeth­er a map of exist­ing and pro­posed trash incin­er­a­tors in Cana­da.  See link here. Green are oper­at­ing, yel­low are pro­posed, red are the failed Plas­co projects.  Scroll down to turn lay­ers on/off, and click on mark­ers for more info on them.

Cana­da incin­er­a­tor map

* I learned about a cou­ple of pro­posed bio­mass incin­er­a­tors in Nova Sco­tia.  One was a local offi­cial who was already skep­ti­cal of it being built in the mid­dle of town and want­ed more info to argue against it.  The oth­er was a com­pa­ny pro­mot­ing it, so we need to find peo­ple will­ing to fight that one, at least.

* I learned that Nova Sco­tia and New­found­land have provin­cial bans on incin­er­a­tors and that Nova Sco­tia does­n’t actu­al­ly digest/stabilize its resid­u­als before land­fill­ing as Paul Con­nett has been report­ing for years.  We should fig­ure out what’s up with this dis­crep­an­cy, since it’s an impor­tant exam­ple to point to, if it’s real­ly going on (and since we should know if/why it stopped, assum­ing it used to hap­pen).  Nova Sco­tia offi­cials also com­ment­ed that they hit wall with 50% diver­sion and now think they need to focus on source reduc­tion to get further.

* The Enerkem trash-to-ethanol project in Edmon­ton, Alber­ta is about to start up in a test­ing phase.  It uses gasi­fi­ca­tion as its first stage and is the first com­mer­cial scale facil­i­ty of its type.  A local coun­cil­lor called it the “crown jew­el” of their effort to avoid land­fills, and seemed a lit­tle sur­prised at my skep­ti­cism that it’ll even work.  He did­n’t know about MSW gasi­fi­ca­tion’s fail­ures and wants to know more.  Seems we’d bet­ter com­pile this info for him soon.

THE PANEL:

John Foden Pres­i­dent, Cana­di­an Resource Recov­ery Council

The pan­el start­ed with the Cana­di­an incin­er­a­tor indus­try’s mouth­piece going first.  John Foden start­ed with a lengthy visu­al demon­stra­tion of how many exces­sive lay­ers of pack­ag­ing came with a pen he was mailed.  Some­how this demon­stra­tion of waste­ful­ness is sup­posed to make peo­ple favor incin­er­a­tion for all of that paper and plas­tic waste.  He argued that “humans are rarely ratio­nal, even when we’re rea­son­able,” as if to paint anti-incin­er­a­tor view­points as irra­tional.  He even argued that pre­sen­ta­tions on incin­er­a­tion are usu­al­ly biased since he thinks that incin­er­a­tion pre­sen­ta­tions are always asked to have bal­ance by adding zero waste advo­cates, yet zero waste pre­sen­ta­tions nev­er seek incin­er­a­tor pro­mot­ers for bal­ance.  (Patri­cia lat­er coun­tered that well, by point­ing out that it’s pro-incin­er­a­tor pre­sen­ta­tions that rarely bal­anced, yet her work in Fras­er Val­ley has often involved putting on bal­anced pub­lic forums.)

Foden stat­ed that there are 800 “ener­gy from waste” plants world-wide.  He claimed that they mea­sure emis­sions real-time and that the info is tracked and goes to reg­u­la­tors… the com­mon refrain (which I destroyed lat­er, point­ing out how just a few pol­lu­tants are mon­i­tored con­tin­u­al­ly and that most are test­ed once a year… akin to set­ting a speed trap once a year and set­ting signs up warn­ing dri­vers that a speed trap lies ahead).

He claimed that British Colum­bia has set the tough­est stan­dards for incineration.

Mike Ewall Founder & Direc­tor, Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work / Advi­so­ry Board Mem­ber, Zero Waste Canada

I had 50 slides to squeeze into 10 min­utes, and I insist­ed on get­ting through it (took me 12–13 min­utes) in the time that Foden took (he went over by the same amount), despite a mod­er­a­tor who pres­sured me much more than she did Foden

Key points I hit:
-showed our new maps of incin­er­a­tion in Cana­da
-how incin­er­a­tors are on the decline in the U.S. and how the world’s largest waste cor­po­ra­tion (WMI) is mov­ing away from them
-dis­cussed how pyrol­y­sis, gasi­fi­ca­tion and plas­ma are incin­er­a­tors and gen­er­al­ly don’t work, cit­ing Plas­co and GBB’s assess­ment of these tech­nolo­gies as high risk
-held up a stack of papers doc­u­ment­ing a decade of Cov­an­ta vio­la­tions, includ­ing how they once were caught and fined for tam­per­ing with their con­tin­u­ous emis­sions mon­i­tors to make it seem as if they were in com­pli­ance when they weren’t
-men­tioned how First Nations are tar­get­ed for incin­er­a­tors in Cana­da
-pre­sent­ed data on how incin­er­a­tion is the most expen­sive and pol­lut­ing way to make ener­gy or to dis­pose of waste
-I men­tioned how I was the one to pre­dict Har­ris­burg, Penn­syl­va­ni­a’s incin­er­a­tor-relat­ed bank­rupt­cy eight years before it hap­pened, and sug­gest­ed that local offi­cials give Durham eight years to see how it works out for them before con­sid­er­ing incin­er­a­tors, since Durham’s is half the size of Har­ris­burg, and small incin­er­a­tors are more like­ly not to work out eco­nom­i­cal­ly (this real­ly woke some Durham Region peo­ple up)
-talked about how con­tin­u­ous mon­i­tors (CEMS) aren’t used for more than a few pol­lu­tants, debunk­ing Foden’s gen­er­al claims of con­tin­u­ous mon­i­tor­ing
-made clear that incin­er­a­tors require land­fills
-point­ed out that over 99% of incin­er­a­tor sit­ing efforts fail, main­ly due to local oppo­si­tion
-called out fake zero waste groups: Nation­al Zero Waste Coun­cil & Metro Van­cou­ver / Zero Waste Committee

[See my pow­er­point for details: http://www.ejnet.org/files/incineration/incineration-FCM-SCC2015.pdf]

Peter Veiga Super­vi­sor, Waste Oper­a­tions, Waste Man­age­ment Ser­vices, Durham Region, Ontario
[The first new new incin­er­a­tor in Cana­da in 20 years is almost com­plet­ed there.]

Durham region pro­duces 250,000 tons/year (includ­ing recy­clables), and 150,000 resid­ual (non-recy­cled waste)

Kirk­land Lake (incin­er­a­tor?) pro­pos­al failed.
They were ship­ping all of their waste to Michi­gan for a while.
There is now an agree­ment signed to stop export­ing waste to Michi­gan.
They were using Pine Tree Acres land­fill in Ontario?
More recent­ly, they’ve been ship­ping waste to Mod­ern Land­fill in NY while build­ing the new incin­er­a­tor in Durham Region.

There’s a “sta­bi­lized land­fill” in Hal­i­fax, but they dis­count­ed this because it’s still a landfill.

Land­fills are 6% of Canada’s GHG emissions.

They plan to mine one of their land­fills to burn the waste in it.

Patri­cia Ross, Board Vice-Chair, Fras­er Val­ley Region­al Dis­trict
[She’s been a leader in fight­ing Metro Van­cou­ver’s plans for new incin­er­a­tors around Van­cou­ver, BC]

Patri­cia real­ly dam­aged their cred­i­bil­i­ty, espe­cial­ly with Plas­co quote about how they were being intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­hon­est when claim­ing zero emis­sions.  She gave a great account of how incin­er­a­tor com­pa­nies mis­lead com­mu­ni­ties, and cov­ered many good points, rein­forc­ing some I made, plus more.

Here’s that email from the Plas­co Ener­gy rep, which I think is precious…

The news­pa­per con­densed it into this quote: “When I said no emis­sions, I meant from the con­ver­sion process.…Of course there are emis­sions from the gas when used to pro­duce electricity.…We could say there are no emis­sions from the total process. But it would not be intel­lec­tu­al­ly honest.”

Yet that is pre­cise­ly what Plas­co rep­re­sen­ta­tives were inten­tion­al­ly lead­ing com­mu­ni­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tives and media to believe.  Patri­ci­a’s goal was for elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives to not sim­ply accept incin­er­a­tor lob­by­ists sales pitch­es as full dis­clo­sure, but rather encour­age them to ask prob­ing ques­tions, inten­tion­al­ly seek an oppos­ing point of view to ensure they have all infor­ma­tion regard­ing the finan­cial, envi­ron­men­tal and health relat­ed risks in order to make a ful­ly informed decision. 

For more info, see: www.stoptheincinerator.com

The orig­i­nal Plas­co email is here, which is rather emblem­at­ic of how gasification/plasma/pyrolysis incin­er­a­tors are marketed:

—
From: Richard Pat­ten <rpatten@plascoenergygroup.com>
To: Patri­cia Ross
Sent: Mon Jun 02 09:57:22 2008
Sub­ject: Hi

Sor­ry we did­n’t get a chance to talk fur­ther. When I said “no emis­sions” I meant from the Con­ver­sion process. Which is dif­fer­ent from oth­er sys­tems.  We do pro­duce a syn­gas that is clean­er than the nat­ur­al gas I use in my home. Of course there are emis­sions from the gas when used to pro­duce elec­tric­i­ty. But, it is the clean­est of any­thing else going. And this comes from divert­ing 100% from land­fill which emitts dirty Methane,let alone the dirty coal that is still pro­duc­ing Elec­tric­i­ty in Ontario. If we just slod off the syn­gas in a pipeline or in cylin­ders to who­ev­er. We couild say there were no emis­sions from the total process. But, it would not be intel­lec­tu­al­ly hon­est. So, are you against clean­ly con­vert­ing garbage to a clean­er fuel?
—