Watching our waste line

Let’s face it, we all throw stuff away. The good news is that we throw less away than we used to, because recycling is more convenient. And as recycling becomes a habit, and our commitment to waste reduction increases, we will do an even better job in the future.

It was not so long ago that Maine had almost as many town dumps as towns. In 1977, 454 unlined “landfills” dotted the landscape, often located on or next to low-lying wetland areas or abutting streams. Today, only seven municipal and two special solid waste landfills remain in the state. Though there is room for improvement, we have made great strides in solid waste management in the past couple of decades.

Rather than burying waste, state policy has been to promote recovery of energy from waste remaining after source reduction and recycling, which is much more environmentally friendly. Modern waste-to-energy facilities convert trash into fuel, which then produce electricity, reducing the need to burn dirty fossil fuels to keep the lights on.

The Penobscot Energy Recovery Co. (PERC) in Orrington is one of four such facilities in Maine. PERC is a public-private partnership between more than 100 municipalities and a private company with expertise in plant operation. This collaboration is an unsung success story of which Maine should be proud. The PERC facility has an outstanding record of permit compliance and emissions reductions, contrary to suggestions in a recent piece on your editorial page.

The Municipal Review Committee (MRC) represents the group of municipal owners of the facility. We have full oversight of PERC’s operations. We are PERC’s neighbors, so it is important to us, more than anyone else, that the facility operates well below Maine’s environmental standards.

You may be interested to know that most of what comes out of the stack is air and water vapor. The Maine Department of Environmental Protection has strict controls on the particulates that the facility is allowed to emit. The facility emits by volume, only 12 percent of the particulates that the MDEP allows and we’re very proud of that record. The MDEP also allows the facility to emit nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), but again, we’re proud that our emissions are very low. In fact, the PERC facility, which takes garbage from 130,000 households that drive about 200,000 cars, emits about the same amount of NOx as 20,000 cars, the same amount of CO as 377 cars and the same amount of VOCs as 40 cars – an impressive record for a plant that accepts 300,000 tons of garbage a year.

To the extent that PERC emits any air toxics, the quantities are incredibly small. During a recent test by an independent testing group and overseen by the MDEP, the PERC facility emitted dioxins at a rate of 0.0027 pounds per year – that is the equivalent of an emission rate of about 1 ounce over a 23-year period. The emission rates for arsenic and mercury were so low that the measurement equipment could not detect any quantity of these metals. Nevertheless, PERC continues to test for evidence of these emissions.

The MRC communities that co-own this facility have insisted on such a high level of environmental performance. We have made sure that the PERC facility has modern pollution control equipment, including spray dryer absorbers, or scrubbers, to remove acid gases, and fabric filters, or baghouses, to remove particulates and condensable metals and organics before they might be emitted to the environment. This equipment is the best available control technology in the industry for these applications. PERC monitors the performance of this equipment continuously, conducts additional tests periodically, and reports all of the results to the MDEP. PERC also maintains this equipment on an ongoing basis. Just this spring, PERC completed a $3.2 million refurbishment of its scrubbing system to ensure its continued effectiveness for pollution control.

With the PERC facility, Maine garbage is used to generate electricity, and the residuals handled carefully to ensure that the environment is protected. Without the PERC facility, central and eastern Maine would need at least one additional landfill as large as the one that is currently permitted in Old Town. Perhaps the convenience of the modern waste disposal leaves our citizens with too little knowledge of where their garbage goes and what is done to ensure that waste management is safe and affordable. The MRC, the PERC facility, the MDEP, and many other stakeholders are working to ensure that our waste stream is managed in ways that are environmentally sound and protective of the public health.

MRC is proud of PERC’s contributions to Maine and would be pleased to further discuss waste management issues with anyone interested in learning more.

Greg Lounder is executive director to the Municipal Review Committee.