A coalition of 50 citizen groups in Massachusetts are fighting a proposed incinerator upgrade costing $33 million. The incinerator will be 52% owned by Mass Refusetech, a subsidiary of Wheelabrator which is a subsidiary of Waste Management. The other 48% will be owned by the twenty three municipal governments for five years. Then the whole ownership will revert to WMI.
Despite a damning report on the proposal by the state's Inspector General, government officials still want to proceed with the project. Some fifty environmental groups calling themselves Clean Water Action oppose the incinerator upgrade. They want the old incinerator closed and call for a 6% increase in recycling and energy conservation programs. Dioxin spewed from the incinerator is a big issue. Dioxin causes cancer and interferes with human reproductive systems. Opponents also claim that the community will be exploited with $200 per ton charges for incinerator use while local landfill charges are $50!
See below for the opportunity Massachusetts residents to contact your governor and write an op-ed page. The op-ed page draft letter explains in more detail the issue.
The NESWC board is preparing to do it again! They are about to sign an agreement with Wheelabrator that the Inpector General's office has called "fundamentally deficient". Janet Werkman, First Assistant Inspector General says the deal poses, "substantial financial risks for the NESWC communities."
The NESWC board held a 2 1/2 hour secret meeting on Wednesday, after which they called for a special meeting this Friday at 10am in Acton. The agreement they are going to be voting on:
* Splits the costs 48% NESWC 52% Wheelabrator - The NESWC communities will only use the facility for 5 of its 20 year life and only send about 1/2 of the trash the facility burns. That means they will use about 12% of the capacity of this retrofit (if it goes through).... use 12%, pay for 48%.
*Requires the NESWC communities to pay their entire share up front - Think about it. Imagine a contractor saying, "I'll build you a house for $100,000, but you've got to pay me the entire amount before I even start." Sound like a good deal to you?
*Contains no requirements that any of the equipment will actually work - Can you believe this? They actually want to send us a bill, in advance, for 17 million dollars, without any guarantee that the equipment will work. To quote the IG - "The proposed Settlement Agreement does not contain a meaningful, enforceable performance guarantee"
I'm also attaching a copy of the document "The Case For Closure" which is our "magnum opus" on the subject. Sections of it should prove useful.
Presently, we are focusing on pressuring the Massachusetts Governor, Paul Cellucci and the State Legislature to get behind the effort to close. We are also mounting a campaign of letters to the editor, Op Ed pieces etc.
(Note: This op-ed letter shows what a local group can do. If you live in that area, send it!)
I include a sample Op Ed:
To: MVEC Activists We have recently heard that the Governor's office is getting 25 to 30 calls a day on the NESWC issue! They are definitely paying attention. We need to keep the heat turned up on this issue. Here's another great way to put NESWC in the public eye.
YOU CAN CO-AUTHOR AN OP-ED! You are doing a great job in keeping letters-to-the-editor in local newspapers. Here is a chance for another media hit. This is a model op-ed drafted by John Andrews that can be submitted to your local town newspaper. Find someone in the town to be a co-author. If possible, add a phrase or sentence to adapt the text to your local community. (e.g. Substitute "Haverhill residents " for "Merrimack Valley residents". Or mention some recent news article in the local paper.) Substitute your name as a co-author in place of XXX. And add your biographical material at the end. If you make substantial changes, feel free to drop John Andrews' name and just submit the piece under your own name. Send to the editor. Call to make sure that it will be printed. When the op-ed is printed, please send clippings to Clean Water Action, 76 Summer Street, Boston, MA 02111.
Within the next two months, state officials must make a major decision regarding the future of the NESWC incinerator in North Andover. They must decide to either enforce recently passed regulations for cumulative pollution impact, effectively closing the facility in the year 2000, or pour an additional $33 million into equipment upgrades that will provide only a partial solution to the pollution problems.
By any reckoning, the fiscal impacts of the North Andover incinerator have been a disaster. Under the current contract between the NESWC (North East Solid Waste Committee) communities and Wheelabrator, the operating company, NESWC communities will soon be paying almost $200 per ton for trash disposal, almost four times the eastern Massachusetts market rate for disposal. By the time the NESWC contract ends in 2005, the communities will have spent almost $200M building and upgrading the plant. One would think that this would mean the communities would own the facility. But incredibly, the NESWC contract calls for the facility to then be turned over to Wheelabrator, free of charge. Taxpayers will then find themselves being charged whatever the market will bear for the use of a facility built with their own trash dollars.
Why the NESWC communities signed a contract that was so unfavorable to the taxpayers is a convoluted story dating back to the late 1970's. According to a report issued in 1997 by the Massachusetts Inspector General, the state Department of Environmental Protection, in conjunction with incinerator operators and contractors, "aggressively marketed" the NESWC proposal. The state pressured local officials by announcing an intention to close local landfills and precipitate a trash "crisis" for communities that did not sign up.
At the same time, misleading financial information was provided to town officials by the incinerator industry and the Massachusetts DEP. According to the sales pitch, an increasing demand for electricity would cause electric rates to skyrocket. The "waste-to-energy" component of the incinerator would be so profitable that by the year 1990, tipping fees would be waived and the towns would actually be paid to send trash there. It seemed too good to be true. . . and it was.
Environmentalists argued that energy conservation was cheaper than new generating power, and that this would keep electric rates from rising. They also argued that increased recycling was a more viable solution to the "trash crisis". But the trash professionals, with the complicity of the DEP, overwhelmed environmental voices. 23 towns locked themselves into a contract with the incinerator. We now know that the environmentalists were right.
Recycling and waste prevention have proven highly effective in dealing with trash, and electricity demand has increased only moderately due to energy efficiency in homes and businesses.
Recently a coalition of over 50 citizen groups in the Merrimack Valley began calling for the closure of the North Andover incinerator on environmental grounds. They have cited DEP data showing that the facility is the state's biggest pollution source for mercury. Mercury, a substance that causes neurological injury to children, has caused fish warnings to be posted in lakes and ponds across Massachusetts. The NESWC incinerator is also one of the largest Massachusetts sources of dioxin - an insidious food contaminant that causes cancer and interferes with human reproductive systems, growth, and development. Nursing infants in Massachusetts are now exposed to 60 times the recommended level of this dangerous chemical, and trash combustion has been identified as the major source of the toxin.
Because of the concentration of incinerators in the Merrimack Valley, the cumulative effects of incinerator pollution are worse there than elsewhere in the state. In 1980, 2 incinerators opened in Lawrence. In 1985, the MRI facility opened in North Andover and in 1989, an incinerator opened in Haverhill. For nearly a decade, these 4 were responsible for 37% of the state's incineration. In June of 1998, one of the Lawrence incinerators closed, but the elevated levels of mercury, lead , dioxin, and heavy metals remain. The other three incinerators continue to emit large amounts of these contaminants into the already overburdened environment The DEP was recently given authority to act against such incinerator clusters, and could use this authority to close the North Andover facility.
While closure would be undertaken to protect public health and the environment, it would also have significant economic benefits. The NESWC towns would be able to use the savings in trash disposal costs to pay off the bond for the incinerator. They would also be relieved of the expensive operating costs of the incinerator, which amounts to over $17M per year. The odious "guaranteed annual tonnage" requirement of the NESWC contract would be lifted, allowing the towns to realize full costs savings from waste prevention and recycling. And the towns' share of the $33 million in retrofit costs would be avoided.
If the incinerator closes, the NESWC communities could negotiate new market-rate contracts for trash disposal. But there are better answers than just sending the trash to other incinerators and landfills. Since the incinerator-building craze in the 1980's, enormous success has been demonstrated by waste prevention and recycling programs. A very modest 6% increase in state recycling goals could eliminate more trash than is burned at North Andover. Waste prevention programs in other New England towns have succeeded in reducing the total waste stream by 35% to 50%, thus producing enormous savings in tipping fees. And these environmentally friendly alternatives, which require little or no taxpayer subsidy, virtually eliminate toxic emissions.
In 1980, government officials took the side of the incinerator industry and unleashed a fifteen-year assault upon public health and the fiscal integrity of the NESWC communities. Now those towns are struggling to pay for schools and basic town services, while Wheelabrator awaits its free $200 million gift from the taxpayers. In the next two months, elected officials have another decision to make. They could side with Wheelabrator and force the towns to pump additional tens of millions of dollars into a polluting dinosaur. Or they turn away from the incinerator lobbyists and help the NESWC towns transition to environmentally and fiscally sustainable waste management. It's a chance for our legislator and the Governor to correct a big mistake. But first, they have to decide whose side they are on. Best Regards, Tom Cobb Clean Water Action 76 Summer St., 3rd Flr Boston, MA, 02110 tomcobb@goddesschant.com 617-423-4661