City incinerator a hot topic

The fight in the late 1980s to build the city’s trash incinerator on the West Plains was big and passionate.

“If this was the Civil War, we just got past Gettysburg,” exclaimed then-City Attorney Jim Sloane in January 1990 – shortly after the Environmental Protection Agency gave the final go-ahead to build the plant.

Two decades later, as numerous contracts involving the plant start to expire, a repeat of that fight doesn’t appear likely as the city begins to explore new agreements to keep the plant going for 20 more years.

While it’s likely the plant will continue to burn trash, the future of the Spokane Regional Solid Waste System, which is run by the city of Spokane, remains a volatile topic among some elected leaders.

“Given some serious game-changer … I don’t see why the plant couldn’t continue to be a viable way for the city and region to continue to dispose of its waste,” said Spokane City Councilman Richard Rush, who added that he’s open to further study of land-filling versus burning.

A local garbage plan required by the state calls for the continued use of the incinerator. That road map already has been approved by Spokane County commissioners, and city councils in Spokane, Spokane Valley, Millwood, Fairfield, Spangle, Rockford and Waverly.

Even if the regional system falls apart, it wouldn’t make sense to mothball the city-owned plant, said Utilities Director Dave Mandyke.

“The rest of the region might go to a landfill,” Mandyke said. “That doesn’t mean we would.”

The system’s contract with Wheelabrator, the Waste Management Inc. subsidiary that operates the plant, expires in November 2011. A month after that, the system’s contract expires with the cities of Spokane Valley and Liberty Lake. Spokane County’s agreement ends in April 2014. The system’s deals with Fairchild Air Force Base and 10 other towns expire in the period from 2014 through 2016.

The regional system was formed in the 1980s to deal with polluting landfills that were scheduled to close. The city of Spokane runs the system and makes most of the decisions except “major” ones, such as setting rates. Those need the support of the Spokane County Board of Commissioners.

In recent years, county leaders have criticized the city’s leadership, arguing that the city is favored over other partners. City leaders deny the charge, but say they are working to better communicate with the county and other towns.

“We’re gaining,” said the system’s director, Russ Menke. “There has been a lot of distrust and resentment.”

County commissioners say they will support the system only if it becomes more independent from the city. They and leaders in other cities say a regional system remains desirable if a new structure gives the county and other cities more say.

“We have a good thing here,” said Spokane Valley City Councilman Gary Schimmels, who sits on the Solid Waste Advisory Committee.

Although the makeup of the system is in flux, the city is moving ahead this fall with a bid process for a new 20-year operating contract for the plant that will be effective next year.

That concerns County Commissioner Bonnie Mager, who in the early 1990s led Citizens for Clean Air, a group that opposed the plant. She said the makeup of a regional system should be complete before a long-term deal is signed that locks in the continued use of the plant without a community debate.

“We need to look at the best way to deal with our garbage,” Mager said. “We need to put everything on the table and decide what’s right for our community.”

Menke responds that operators have more incentive to perform important maintenance in longer contracts.

“The result is, if you do short-term contracts, at the end of every contract you have a plant that needs a lot of work,” he said.

He said he’s hopeful that two or more firms will bid on the operations contract.

A 2009 independent audit of the solid waste system, performed at the urging of county leaders, said the incinerator is “generally in good condition” and that waste-to-energy plants that are well-maintained may last 40 or more years.

County Commissioner Todd Mielke said it makes sense for a regional system to continue using the incinerator.

“We’re at a point where it still has a life span to it,” said Mielke, who agrees that a new governance structure is needed. “It’s still in decent condition.”

Critics of the system argue that the plant has forced trash rates to spike. But prices are less than in some other Washington cities and similar to two adjacent counties.

The regional system charges $98 for each ton of garbage it receives, including waste collected at the curb. That’s cheaper than Tacoma and Seattle, but more than Vancouver.

It’s not surprising that Spokane’s rates are in line with other communities in the state, said Keith Thomsen, manager of operations and research for the Center for Bioproducts and Bioenergy at Washington State University Tri-Cities. That’s because many places in Washington haul garbage to landfills more than 100 miles away, causing large transportation expenses.

Spokane isn’t immune to the large cost of transporting garbage. While most trash in Spokane County is burned, the plant is at capacity. Last year, 16 percent of waste received by the regional system was buried in landfills, mostly outside Spokane County. The plant’s ash is shipped to a landfill by train in south-central Washington.

Menke and others say they expect trash rates to fall after 2011, once the city pays off the cost of building the plant. This year, that payment is about $16 million.

Trash incinerators have gained favor in recent years among some environmentalists because of concerns over global warming.

A 2009 joint study from the Environmental Protection Agency and North Carolina State University showed that trash incinerators have less of an effect on climate change than landfills.

Joe DeCarolis, assistant professor of civil construction and environmental engineering at NCSU, said the finding is in part because methane is created in landfills when organic products break down. Even in landfills that have systems to capture methane, 15 to 30 percent of the gas escapes into the atmosphere, and methane has 25 times more impact on global warming than carbon dioxide, said DeCarolis, one of the authors of the report.

The plant tests for three pollutants all the time. Nine other pollutants are tested only annually. The incinerator has “state of the art” pollution controls, said April Westby, an environmental engineer who oversees incinerator compliance for the Spokane Regional Clean Air Authority.

“In general, they have a good compliance history,” she said.

Still, the plant’s record is not perfect.

Since the beginning of 2007, the plant has exceeded limits on pollutants tested on an ongoing basis 10 times, usually during an equipment failure. Westby said the incinerator’s record has improved since early 2009, when the plant’s boiler was upgraded. There was only one violation in 2009 and one so far in 2010.

The most recent violation was July 8, when the incinerator exceeded its pollution limit on carbon monoxide.

Westby added that preliminary results from the annual test this year show the plant may have exceeded mercury limits. The test was performed in June and is based on three readings. One of the readings was over the limit enough to create an average above the permitted level, she said. A final report on the annual test won’t be complete until later this month, she said.

Occasional permit violations aren’t out of the ordinary at waste-to-energy plants, Thomsen said.

“The fact that they have a periodic breakdown is just something that is endemic of this type of engineering solution,” Thomsen said.