Thousands of tons of trash from across the Twin Cities ended up in landfills instead of being incinerated to make electricity last year, despite a state law that prioritizes burning over burying. But that 30-year-old law has never been enforced — until now.
State regulators are pressing the companies that collect and dispose of metro area trash to fill the area’s incinerators before heading to landfills, a shift that has met with resistance and even a legal challenge. Meanwhile, the burners at Great River Energy’s waste-to-energy plant in Elk River run below capacity, and lack of trash forced Red Wing to close a small incinerator at its processing facility several years ago.
“There’s no reason for us to be putting this amount of waste in the ground when we have facilities that are built and operating that can handle it,” said Sigurd Scheurle, planning director with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA).
Facilities that take trash for incineration had enough unused capacity in 2016 to handle about 14 percent of the trash that went to metro area landfills, according to data provided by the MPCA and Great River Energy.
Redirecting trash for burning poses challenges, however. There are hundreds of companies involved in hauling and processing trash in the metro area. And facilities that accept the trash — landfills and waste-to-energy sites — charge different prices per ton dropped off.
“It has literally put the whole industry in turmoil like it’s never been,” said Bill Keegan, who chairs the Minnesota chapter of the National Waste and Recycling Association. “Nobody knows how to do this, nobody even knows how to enforce it.”
Houston-based Waste Management, the nation’s largest waste firm and owner of three of the four primary landfills that take metro area trash, tried unsuccessfully to block enforcement in court several years ago.
Waste Management spokeswoman Julie Ketchum said requiring waste to be redirected to another private company amounts to a violation of federal law — though the MPCA disagrees. The Great River Energy waste-to-energy facility is near one of Waste Management’s landfills.
“In essence, we are being asked to support a competitor,” Ketchum said.
Tim Steinbeck of Great River Energy, a cooperative energy company, said they are losing millions of dollars a year on the Elk River operation, a cost borne by their member owners. Those facilities, which process trash and incinerate it, operated at about 80 percent capacity last year.
“It is a bit awkward, we readily admit that,” Steinbeck said. “Yes, we are effectively a private business. But we’re funded by all Minnesota consumers in their electric rate, mostly outside the metro.”
Incineration Controversy
About half the trash from the seven-county metro area is recycled or composted. But 23 percent of it went to landfills in 2015, while another 28 percent was processed for incineration.
Waste-to-energy facilities generally remove recyclable metals and grind up trash for burning, though Hennepin County’s downtown Minneapolis facility accepts the waste whole and removes metals after burning. The resulting ash, which is sent to landfills, is about one-tenth the volume of the original garbage.
To read the full story, visit http://www.startribune.com/mpca-pushes-to-keep-twin-cities-trash-burning-at-capacity/411420465/.