Battling incinerators? Let Keahole have it
Wednesday, December 12, 2007 at 11:37AM Today's Hawaii Tribune-Herald has a story on the proposed waste-to-energy plant in West Hawaii that was reported earlier on the Kona Blog and here, yet there's still no mention of where the Natural Energy Lab of Hawaii proposes to get its 200 tons of solid waste to burn every day. Will it burn the county's solid waste? What about the planned County incinerator? Is the implication in this story that Puuanahulu will shut down because of the methane? Would there be enough rubbish to feed two incinerators and a landfill? Shouldn't there be some coordination in these expensive incinerator plans?
Mayor Kim reportedly endorsed the NELHA project without saying how it fits into the overall scheme of solid waste disposal in Hawaii County, which is on the verge of committing big big bucks for an East Hawaii incinerator not much larger than what NELHA's proposing. But if NELHA builds a WTE plant, why does the County need one?
Can you imagine a scenario in which West Hawaii ends up with East Hawaii's rubbish going into the Puuanahulu landfill and an incinerator at Keahole Point? That would be not only rich irony, it would be the most economical long-term solution yet by far to the county's rubbish problem. But few politicians would have the will to propose it.
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Reader Comments (5)
"...most economical long-term solution..."
?
Hey, did you see that pig flying by?
environmentally sensitive area. There is 30 businesses that
use the cold seawater. Which will be impacted by this facility.
In my scenario, as unlikely as it is, the NELHA incinerator replaces the county's, eliminating that cost. Then we continue to use the good landfill that we have for anything the NELHA incinerator can't handle. We'll pay the trucking costs and and say good-bye to the bail-and-barge option. Meanwhile, we promote the hell out of recycling. The costs to the county would be next to nothing compared to what we're looking at now. I'll admit there's plenty to scoff at in the my little dream scenario, but if somebody else is willing to build an incinerator, let 'em. That alone could save the county hundreds of millions of dollars, making it the most economical solution for taxpayers. But West Hawaii folks will scream bloody murder and we'll all end up paying for the very expensive solutions to the solid waste problem.
As for who pays? There is no free lunch.
Pay me now or pay me later. The sweet angels at Pacific Waste may give you a come on about how they want to help us deal with our 'waste problem', so, they'll build a waste-to-energy facility. Then? The costs will show up in one form or another and somebody on this island other than Pacific Waste will be paying them.
Two technical points:
First, the proposed Kona incinerator is a gasification process, and the proposed Hilo incinerator is combustion. The gasification is newer and more expensive, and it reduces the volume of stuff even more, which means it takes the chemicals in plastic, treated lumber, electronic circuitry (which gets in despite efforts otherwise), and other stuff and changes them into more toxic forms ever-more concnetrated and more difficult to keep out of the food chain.
Second, should either, much less both, of the proposed incinerators become operational, recycling of plastic and paper will be dead. Even Waste Management, Inc (parent company of Wheelabrator, the Hilo burners) explicitly states in their prospectus that increased recycling, a "low-margin" activity is a risk for their "high-margin" waste-to-energy business. In Massachusetts it has been shown that communities with incinerators did not keep up with the recycling rates in communities without.
on either side of this island.