Connecticut: Don’t replace incineration with more burning!

Hart­ford, Con­necti­cut is home to an aging and very pol­lut­ing trash incin­er­a­tor that the state would like to close. This state-run incin­er­a­tor serves 70 Con­necti­cut towns and is the coun­ty’s sec­ond largest air pol­luter. Shut­ting it down is a great idea, but…

Con­necti­cut’s Depart­ment of Ener­gy and Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion (DEEP) only con­sid­ered three pro­pos­als to replace the incin­er­a­tor — all of which involved more incineration!

The three pro­pos­als were:

• Sacyr Rooney: to keep the incin­er­a­tor in Hart­ford oper­at­ing, where it would remain the sec­ond largest air pol­luter in Hart­ford Coun­ty, even with their pro­posed emis­sions reductions.
  
• Cov­an­ta: would close the incin­er­a­tor in Hart­ford, and ship waste to Cov­an­ta’s incin­er­a­tors in Bris­tol and Pre­ston, CT. It would require a 4‑fold expan­sion of their incin­er­a­tor in Bris­tol, mak­ing the Bris­tol incin­er­a­tor the sec­ond largest air pol­luter in Hart­ford Coun­ty and one of the largest incin­er­a­tors in the U.S.
  
• Mus­tang Renew­able Pow­er Ven­tures: would have some recy­clables removed from the trash, and the rest would be baled, shipped to be burned in Lafarge­Hol­cim’s large and very pol­lut­ing cement kiln in Rave­na, NY.
  

Even with the stan­dard pol­lu­tion con­trols that all of these facil­i­ties have, trash incin­er­a­tors tend to be much dirt­i­er than coal pow­er plants, even though coal plants have few­er air pol­lu­tion con­trols. In fact, trash incin­er­a­tion is the most expen­sive and pol­lut­ing way to man­age waste or to make energy.

The state had the option of choos­ing none of them. Con­necti­cut Pub­lic Act No. 14–94 states that the Com­mis­sion­er of Ener­gy and Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion “may” select one of these three final pro­pos­als on or before Decem­ber 31, 2017.

Prince George’s Coun­ty, Mary­land went through a sim­i­lar process which eval­u­at­ed var­i­ous “waste-to-ener­gy” schemes and chose sev­en final­ists, includ­ing two of the three being con­sid­ered by DEEP: Mus­tang and Cov­an­ta. After much time and mon­ey was spent pur­su­ing these pro­pos­als, the coun­ty aban­doned their entire con­tract process in August 2016, scrap­ping all of the pro­pos­als and mov­ing for­ward with devel­op­ment of a Zero Waste Plan with much pub­lic involve­ment from com­mu­ni­ty stakeholders.

Many res­i­dents con­tact­ed the DEEP Com­mis­sion­er to urge him to reject all three pro­pos­als and pur­sue a gen­uine Zero Waste plan instead. THANK YOU to all who used our action alerts to con­tact Con­necti­cut officials.

Ulti­mate­ly, the state sur­prised us and picked Sacyr Rooney, which means con­tin­ued burn­ing in the envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice com­mu­ni­ty of the City of Hart­ford. We’re thank­ful for hav­ing defeat­ed the plans of Mus­tang to burn in New York, and will be work­ing with Albany area offi­cials to stop waste burn­ing there for good. We’re also thank­ful to have helped stop Cov­an­ta’s plan, and to now have many res­i­dents in Bris­tol, CT pay­ing atten­tion to the largest pol­luter in their city, Cov­an­ta’s Bris­tol incin­er­a­tor. We’ll be con­tin­u­ing to sup­port the Con­necti­cut Coali­tion for Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice in their effort to stop the incin­er­a­tion aspect of the Sacyr Rooney proposal.

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Oppo­si­tion on the record:

• 12/29/2017: Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work Com­ments Ques­tion­ing Mus­tang and RFP process, and Cov­an­ta Capac­i­ty (with Excel attach­ment on Cov­an­ta capac­i­ty)
  
• 12/27/2017: Albany Offi­cials’ press con­fer­ence oppos­ing all three plans
  
• 12/27/2017: Town of Coey­mans, NY let­ter from major­i­ty of Town offi­cials oppos­ing all three plans and vow­ing to stop cement kiln burn plan (an ear­li­er let­ter just from the Town Super­vi­sor was sent on 12/22/2017)
  
• 12/22/2017: River­keep­er State­ment Oppos­ing Burn­ing in Hud­son Riv­er Valley
  
• 12/18/2017: Let­ter from 20 of 39 Albany Coun­ty Leg­is­la­tors to CT DEEP (signed copy)
  
• 12/21/2017: Lafarge Ad stat­ing in New York paper that the cement plant is not inter­est­ed in burn­ing CT garbage
  
• 12/15/2017: Let­ter from Albany Coun­ty Exec­u­tive to CT DEEP
  
• 11/24/2017: Con­necti­cut Coali­tion for Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice and Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work Com­ments to CT DEEP and Doc­u­men­ta­tion
  
• 11/15/2017: Let­ter from Hart­ford City Plan­ning and Zon­ing Com­mis­sion sup­port­ing Cov­an­ta pro­pos­al over Sacyr Rooney, in order to reclaim river­front prop­er­ty in Hartford
  

Media cov­er­age:

• 1/3/2018: Con­necti­cut puts final nail in for­mer Lafarge garbage burn­ing plan
  
• 1/2/2018: Span­ish-New York Devel­op­ment Group Cho­sen To Upgrade Hart­ford Region­al Trash Plant
  
• 12/29/2017: Cov­an­ta won’t expand trash plant, Bris­tol may­or says
  
• 12/28/2017: Com­mu­ni­ty Lead­ers, Envi­ron­men­tal­ists Oppose Garbage Burn Proposal
  
• 12/28/2017: Envi­ron­men­tal­ists Oppose Con­necti­cut Plan To Burn Garbage In Hud­son Valley
  
• 12/27/2017: Pro­pos­al To Ship Trash From Con­necti­cut To N.Y. Hits Snag
  
• 12/27/2017: Pro­pos­al to trans­port, burn over 100,000 tons of trash from CT to NY shot down
  
• 12/27/2017: Oppo­nents cheer demise of cement kiln garbage incin­er­a­tion plan
  
• 12/27/2017: Com­mu­ni­ty opposed to garbage burn proposal
  
• 12/27/2017: Offi­cials, advo­cates give vehe­ment thumbs down to trash plan
  
• 12/27/2017: Upstate NY offi­cials oppose plan to burn Con­necti­cut garbage
  
• 12/27/2017: Report: Plans to send CT trash to NY scrapped
  
• 12/27/2017: Albany Coun­ty pro­test­ers want Con­necti­cut garbage plan trashed
  
• 12/27/2017: Upstate New York Offi­cials Oppose Plan to Burn Con­necti­cut Garbage (AP) (also picked up by Chica­go Tribune)
  
• 12/26/2017: Lafarge denies waste burn­ing plan in Ravena
  
• 12/26/2017: Lafarge: No deal on trash plan Com­pa­ny offi­cials says Lafarge was includ­ed in CT pro­pos­al ‘with­out our consent’
  
• 12/19/2017: Connecticut’s trash may be head­ed to Lafarge
  
• 12/16/2017: Con­necti­cut Garbage in Upstate New York