"Massachusetts plan to burn waste is opposed; State disputed on safeguards for environment" by Beth Daley | Globe Staff, December 31, 2012
A state plan to loosen a nearly quarter-century moratorium on new waste incinerators is renewing a long-simmering trash war in Massachusetts over how to deal with the vast amounts of garbage that residents and businesses generate each day.
Everything is framed in terms of a war in my war paper (sigh).
As for vast amounts of garbage, I have a pile of Globes on the table over there.
State officials say landfill space is already so tight that Massachusetts is forced to export significant amounts of trash. By the end of the decade, space will be so scarce that the state could export as much as 18 percent of the garbage it generates.
Good Lord, who is accepting our garbage?
To ease the landfill crunch, officials want to allow new technologies on a limited scale that would turn waste into energy and not emit as many harmful air pollutants as traditional incinerators.
Yeah, I was thinking that burning trash couldn't be good for the air, but....
See: Boston Globe Garbage Can
I could throw them in there, but I usually recycle them.
Yet environmentalists are ardently opposed, arguing that the state could find more space for garbage if it stopped allowing banned materials such as recyclables, yard debris, and wood into landfills and incinerators. At the South Hadley Landfill in October, for example, there were at least 50 truckloads of banned material dumped in the landfill, according to town officials.
Environmentalists maintain that the new technologies are unproved and environmentally unsound and that loosening the incinerator moratorium will mean the state will not work harder to reduce waste.
“New technologies are proposed all the time, but thus far none of them have been proven safe and effective in removing harmful air pollution,’’ said Sue Reid, director of the Massachusetts office of Conservation Law Foundation, a Boston-based legal environmental advocacy group.
But the real threat is global warming!
State officials will probably decide whether to ease the moratorium within 30 to 60 days after receiving public comment through Feb. 15 as part of finalizing a solid-waste master plan for the state. Taunton officials are already hoping to bring such a facility to their community.
They can have the noise and stink.
Garbage woes are nothing new in Massachusetts, which boasts some of the country’s most ambitious efforts to reduce garbage. The state, for instance, will begin banning some commercial food waste from landfills and the seven existing incinerators in 2014. But Massachusetts has experienced problems achieving those reduction goals.
The state lifted a moratorium on landfills in 2000 because of a growing realization that more space was needed for garbage, but no new landfills have been built because of a lack of space and opposition from local communities.
Yes, it's always your fault if you want a clean community, citizen.
Now your yearly carbon tax total comes to.... hey, isn't that incineration plant putting carbon into the atmosphere?
The state has periodically reviewed its 1990 incinerator moratorium, most recently in 2009, when officials decided to keep the moratorium in part because new technologies to burn garbage in an environmentally safe way remained unproved.
Now, state officials say the situation is dire....
Garbage exports are projected to rise to 2 million tons a year by 2020....
And who is taking that s*** of our hands?
--more--"
Related: Massachusetts Says Burn Baby Burn
FLASHBACK:
"State revisits ban on new incinerators; Opponents fear impact on recycling initiatives" by David Abel, Globe Staff | May 11, 2009
SAUGUS - With its two boilers brewing fires at more than 2,200 degrees, the massive incinerator along Bear Creek burns 1,500 tons of trash a day, mounds of which are hauled to the aging plant on tractor-trailers and deposited in an 85-foot-deep pit piled high with soggy cardboard, ripped plastic, and loads of other refuse.
In addition to generating enough electricity to power 47,000 homes a day, the incinerator - one of seven left in the state - releases a constant plume of carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxide, and an awful, nose-burning stench.
"Ah, the smell of money," John O'Rourke, the incinerator's plant manager, joked during a recent tour. For the first time in 15 years, environmental officials are considering whether to end the state's moratorium on new incinerators....
And we are supposed to take their fart-misting global warming seriously?
Over the years, to the chagrin of environmental groups, waste management companies have lobbied aggressively to lift the ban, arguing that new technology significantly reduces emissions and that it's better to burn the trash and collect the resulting energy than dump it in the state's rapidly filling landfills or ship it out of state, sometimes as far as South Carolina.
Oh, SOUTH CAROLINA takes OUR GARBAGE, huh?
UPDATE: Burning questions
I'm sure you have some of your own, readers.
I'll be back tomorrow, dear readers, to begin February in an entirely new yet similar style and with an exciting yet still familiar format.
