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Halton eyes T.O.'s trash
Plans to build waste-to-energy facility
Plant could take 70% of GTA trash
Aug. 24, 2006. 05:41 AM
MIKE FUNSTON
STAFF REPORTER
Halton Region plans to build a plant that potentially could take 70 per cent of the GTA's garbage and turn it into electricity.
The waste-to-energy facility would use incineration or other thermal technologies to turn trash to ash.
Regional staff have begun studying the options for the proposal and are to report back in the spring. Choices range from a $250 million facility to meet Halton's waste-management needs until 2050, to a $500 million to $700 million plant that could accept waste from neighbouring cities. The plant would be located at the region's landfill site in Milton.
"We're going to look at all our options and figure out what's best for Halton," said Peter Crockett, the region's commissioner of planning and public works. "That will determine how engaged we become with other municipalities."
But the aim is to have a plant up and running by 2009, said Halton's chair Joyce Savoline.
A large plant would go a long way to easing the GTA's looming garbage crisis. Toronto has no local facility for its trash and instead uses 100 trucks a day to haul garbage to landfills in Michigan — amounting to 850,000 tonnes a year. Other GTA municipalities have been forced to take similar action.
But the arrangements are under threat.
Rising fuel costs and border slowdowns have trucking firms asking that their deals be renegotiated, while Michigan legislators have been actively petitioning Washington to close the border to Ontario's waste. Meanwhile, provincial requirements make it difficult to open new landfills in Ontario.
Halton's big-plant proposal would mean Toronto or other municipalities could use the facility, but at a price. According to one estimate, the fees could generate about $45 million in annual revenue for Halton.
The plant would also reduce pollution by cutting trucking needs, and the energy from such an operation, processing up to 1.2 million tonnes a year of waste, would provide power for 60,000 homes, Savoline said.
This option requires that waste from outside the region be moved on existing rail lines to the site, on the west side of Regional Rd. 25, about four kilometres north of Highway 407 in Milton. A short spur line would be built into the landfill site.
The Halton-only option would handle all residential garbage now going into the landfill and industrial-commercial garbage that's being shipped to Michigan. In the process, it would generate electricity for 18,000 homes.
If Halton doesn't build the plant, it will run out of residential landfill capacity by 2030, and if the Michigan border is closed to industrial-commercial waste, that capacity will be reached by 2017, it says.
The key to Halton's plan is that an option to build an energy-from-waste plant was approved by the province in 1989. The region originally had an eight-year deadline to build the plant after the Milton landfill opened in 1992, but the province granted an indefinite extension in 2000.
However, Halton Region council must still approve any proposal, and opposition could be fierce. Waste-to-energy plants use different heating applications to dispose of waste — and incineration, which has a dirty reputation, is one such option.
Savoline said regional staff will investigate the cleanest technologies available, including incineration and thermal technologies known as gasification, plasma arc and thermal cracking.
These so-called "higher order" technologies don't require the same emission controls as incinerators because the waste is cooked in an oxygen-free environment, Crockett said.
But even incinerators have such stringent pollution controls today that emissions are well below the safety limits set by the province, he said.
Toronto Mayor David Miller was unavailable for comment, but he and city council have opposed incineration and other energy-from-waste technologies as an approach that are not environmentally friendly and/or too expensive.
Steve Whitter, Toronto's director of transfer processing and disposal, said he wasn't aware of Halton's plans and was reluctant to comment on whether the city would be interested in sending garbage to such a facility.
York and Durham regions have a joint plan to build an energy-from-waste incinerator that will be capable of taking all garbage that isn't diverted through recycling and composting.
Gord Perks of the Toronto Environmental Alliance said building energy-from-waste plants is not the right solution to the garbage crisis.
The best solution is a combination of strict packaging laws and good recycling programs to reduce the volume going into landfills, he said.
"Once an incinerator is built, you're locked into burning garbage to justify the investment," he said. "Incinerators are mouths that demand garbage."
Legal Notice: Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Distribution, transmission or republication of any material from www.thestar.com is strictly prohibited without the prior written permission of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. For information please contact us using our webmaster form. www.thestar.com online since 1996.
Plans to build waste-to-energy facility
Plant could take 70% of GTA trash
Aug. 24, 2006. 05:41 AM
MIKE FUNSTON
STAFF REPORTER
Halton Region plans to build a plant that potentially could take 70 per cent of the GTA's garbage and turn it into electricity.
The waste-to-energy facility would use incineration or other thermal technologies to turn trash to ash.
Regional staff have begun studying the options for the proposal and are to report back in the spring. Choices range from a $250 million facility to meet Halton's waste-management needs until 2050, to a $500 million to $700 million plant that could accept waste from neighbouring cities. The plant would be located at the region's landfill site in Milton.
"We're going to look at all our options and figure out what's best for Halton," said Peter Crockett, the region's commissioner of planning and public works. "That will determine how engaged we become with other municipalities."
But the aim is to have a plant up and running by 2009, said Halton's chair Joyce Savoline.
A large plant would go a long way to easing the GTA's looming garbage crisis. Toronto has no local facility for its trash and instead uses 100 trucks a day to haul garbage to landfills in Michigan — amounting to 850,000 tonnes a year. Other GTA municipalities have been forced to take similar action.
But the arrangements are under threat.
Rising fuel costs and border slowdowns have trucking firms asking that their deals be renegotiated, while Michigan legislators have been actively petitioning Washington to close the border to Ontario's waste. Meanwhile, provincial requirements make it difficult to open new landfills in Ontario.
Halton's big-plant proposal would mean Toronto or other municipalities could use the facility, but at a price. According to one estimate, the fees could generate about $45 million in annual revenue for Halton.
The plant would also reduce pollution by cutting trucking needs, and the energy from such an operation, processing up to 1.2 million tonnes a year of waste, would provide power for 60,000 homes, Savoline said.
This option requires that waste from outside the region be moved on existing rail lines to the site, on the west side of Regional Rd. 25, about four kilometres north of Highway 407 in Milton. A short spur line would be built into the landfill site.
The Halton-only option would handle all residential garbage now going into the landfill and industrial-commercial garbage that's being shipped to Michigan. In the process, it would generate electricity for 18,000 homes.
If Halton doesn't build the plant, it will run out of residential landfill capacity by 2030, and if the Michigan border is closed to industrial-commercial waste, that capacity will be reached by 2017, it says.
The key to Halton's plan is that an option to build an energy-from-waste plant was approved by the province in 1989. The region originally had an eight-year deadline to build the plant after the Milton landfill opened in 1992, but the province granted an indefinite extension in 2000.
However, Halton Region council must still approve any proposal, and opposition could be fierce. Waste-to-energy plants use different heating applications to dispose of waste — and incineration, which has a dirty reputation, is one such option.
Savoline said regional staff will investigate the cleanest technologies available, including incineration and thermal technologies known as gasification, plasma arc and thermal cracking.
These so-called "higher order" technologies don't require the same emission controls as incinerators because the waste is cooked in an oxygen-free environment, Crockett said.
But even incinerators have such stringent pollution controls today that emissions are well below the safety limits set by the province, he said.
Toronto Mayor David Miller was unavailable for comment, but he and city council have opposed incineration and other energy-from-waste technologies as an approach that are not environmentally friendly and/or too expensive.
Steve Whitter, Toronto's director of transfer processing and disposal, said he wasn't aware of Halton's plans and was reluctant to comment on whether the city would be interested in sending garbage to such a facility.
York and Durham regions have a joint plan to build an energy-from-waste incinerator that will be capable of taking all garbage that isn't diverted through recycling and composting.
Gord Perks of the Toronto Environmental Alliance said building energy-from-waste plants is not the right solution to the garbage crisis.
The best solution is a combination of strict packaging laws and good recycling programs to reduce the volume going into landfills, he said.
"Once an incinerator is built, you're locked into burning garbage to justify the investment," he said. "Incinerators are mouths that demand garbage."
Legal Notice: Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Distribution, transmission or republication of any material from www.thestar.com is strictly prohibited without the prior written permission of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. For information please contact us using our webmaster form. www.thestar.com online since 1996.