Waste to Energy a Health Hazard?

Waste to Ener­gy a Health Hazard?

- by Mark Mar­tin, June 23, 2013. Source: Chris­t­ian Broad­cast­ing Net­work 

Accord­ing to the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency, it’s one of 86 plants that burns munic­i­pal sol­id waste to recov­er ener­gy. The plant process­es around 3,000 tons of munic­i­pal sol­id waste each day. Com­pa­ny lead­ers say that pro­duces enough elec­tric­i­ty for 80,000 homes.

“The first key to a very effi­cient and clean com­bus­tion process is mix­ing the waste well,” Paul Gilman, chief sus­tain­abil­i­ty offi­cer of Cov­an­ta, explained. “So you can see and hear the cranes behind me mix­ing that waste and then slow­ly feed­ing it to the boil­ers that cre­ate the steam that then makes the elec­tric­i­ty for those homes.”

Tox­ic Waste?

How­ev­er, for attor­ney Mike Ewall, co-direc­tor of Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work, the process is def­i­nite­ly not clean.

“Incin­er­a­tion, first of all, is not waste to ener­gy,” Ewall told CBN News. “They like to call it that, but what it real­ly is is waste turned into tox­ic ash and tox­ic air emissions.”

“Incin­er­a­tion releas­es a lot of tox­ic met­als like lead, mer­cury, arsenic, cad­mi­um,” he con­tin­ued. “It releas­es diox­ins and furans, which are the most tox­ic chem­i­cals known to sci­ence, and these chem­i­cals get into the food supply.”

Lead­ers at Cov­an­ta main­tain mea­sures are in place to com­ply with EPA reg­u­la­tions and to pro­tect peo­ple from harm­ful emissions.

“The empha­sis on air pol­lu­tion con­trol equip­ment today and effi­cient recov­ery of the ener­gy that’s in your waste real­ly has made it a remark­able source of renew­able pow­er,” Gilman told CBN News.

Cov­an­ta lead­ers also say the ash pro­duced from the com­bus­tion process is safe­ly stored in a monofill with a lin­er that’s designed to pre­vent the leach­ing of rain water into the soil.

“Is there fugi­tive ash from these monofills? Is there met­al leach­ing out of that con­crete as it sets up? And the answer to those ques­tions in the long-term mon­i­tor­ing is no if you’ve done it right,” Gilman said.

“And that’s what we set out to do,” he said. “That’s what the local envi­ron­men­tal agen­cies assure that we do. Then you don’t have an issue with the ash, and you don’t have an issue with air emis­sions asso­ci­at­ed with these facilities.”

“I am not in any way con­cerned for my health for that monofill,” Cov­an­ta facil­i­ty man­ag­er Scott Drew told CBN News. “It’s very well built; it fol­lows strict guide­lines from the local Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Qual­i­ty. I have no con­cerns for myself or my fam­i­ly and my three kids who live right in this community.”

Skep­tics Sound the Alarm

Mary Jane Reyes, who lives about eight miles from the Cov­an­ta facil­i­ty, isn’t con­vinced. She told CBN News she wants to raise aware­ness of the dan­gers asso­ci­at­ed with the com­bus­tion of munic­i­pal sol­id waste.

“When I saw that they had built homes so close, I saw chil­dren in the street play­ing, so it was just… they’re all so inno­cent, and they’re poten­tial­ly going to have a lot of years not on their lives,” Reyes said.

Ewall shares Reyes’ concerns.

“I would­n’t want to live in a com­mu­ni­ty where I have this many tox­ic chem­i­cals com­ing out of an incin­er­a­tor stack where the heav­ier pol­lu­tants will drop right on this com­mu­ni­ty, and I’d be breath­ing them and where the land­fill gas from a land­fill right next door also would be affect­ing the com­mu­ni­ty,” Ewall said.

Bruce Pham’s back­yard is near a tree-lined ridge. Behind the ridge is the ash landfill.

“When I first moved in here it was a short-term thing, but if I were to live here long-term, it would con­cern me,” Pham told CBN News. “Just the fact that being so close, we’re not sure how much of it runs off… and to be hon­est, most of the biggest con­cerns is just the smell some­times; it real­ly can be odor­ous around here on cer­tain mornings.”

“They’re odors because they’re com­ing off of these facil­i­ties and have many oth­er chem­i­cals mixed in with them,” Ewall said. “So some of them… some of those chem­i­cals have odors; many of the oth­er hun­dreds of chem­i­cals mixed into these gas­es, you will nev­er smell, but they will affect your health.”

Despite the con­cerns of near­by res­i­dents, Drew denies odors are a problem.

“Com­bus­tion air comes through the tip­ping floor doors, comes under the pit wall and into the unit, always keep­ing the odor inside,” Drew said. “In the 15 years that I’ve been here there has not been one sin­gle odor com­plaint from the facility.”

Ewal­l’s Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work does­n’t buy that claim.

“It’s impor­tant that peo­ple orga­nize to make sure that this incin­er­a­tor is closed down,” Ewall said. “Which from D.C., where I live, we’ll be work­ing to make sure that we stop send­ing waste here when the con­tract comes up in a cou­ple of years and to make sure that the land­fill stops oper­at­ing as well because it should­n’t be this big and con­tin­ue to expand this close to residents.”