The Truth
By Lucy Corlett
Now that we know something about Covanta, it’s important for me to explain the company’s informational shortcomings. The points listed on Covanta’s “Energy-from-Waste Facilities vs Incinerators – Debunking the Myths” page are a good place to start.
“Today’s modern Energy-from-Waste facilities are not your Grandfather's incinerator”
Contrary to Covanta’s claim, some of the particulate control systems utilized by their facilities are, in fact, quite grandfatherly. Electrostatic precipitators (ESPs) became the most common fly ash collection system in the 1970s, as they somewhat effectively removed suspended ash particles from the byproduct of the furnace by applying a high-voltage electrostatic charge and collecting the particles on charged plates.
According to a report published by the National Research Council (US) Committee on Health Effects of Waste Incineration, many older municipal incinerators “do not have effective air-pollution control systems. Some have only a particulate-control device, often a relatively ineffective one designed to meet old standards for emissions of particulate.”
A series of fabric filters, also known as “baghouses,” were implemented in newly constructed facilities in the 1980s. These filters are supposed to be much better at controlling potential fine particulate and gas pollution.
However, many Covanta incinerators, including Covanta Camden, still operate their ESPs and have not implemented the safer fabric filters. During my visit to Covanta Camden, I asked about their pollution control system, citing the baghouse I had seen at Covanta’s Plymouth Meeting facility a couple of weeks before. An employee told me that Covanta Camden did not have a baghouse and lamented the expenses required to maintain their ESPs from the 1980s. I was shocked when I realized that, on the landing page of their website, Covanta Camden claims to use “semi-dry flue gas scrubbers inject lime, fabric filter baghouses, nitrogen oxide control system, mercury control system, and continuous emissions monitoring (CEM) system,” to manage and reduce their emissions.
I was disturbed to learn that Covanta Camden still uses pollution control technology from the 1980s. Since I was not allowed to see the actual baghouse at Plymouth or the ESPs at Camden for myself, I cannot say which of these claims are true. For comparison, here are the pollution control systems used by Covanta’s Philadelphia-area incinerators:
- Flue gas (gas exiting to the atmosphere via a pipe or channel for conveying gases from a furnace) scrubbers injecting lime (to remove sulfur dioxide and hydrochloric acid)
- Fabric filter baghouses for nitrogen oxide and mercury control
- Continuous emissions monitoring system and Chester facilities use baghouses
Delaware Valley (substantially larger than both Camden and Plymouth Meeting, processing nearly three times as much waste per day)
- One baghouse with 1,440 bags per boiler as well as one spray dry absorber (transforms gaseous pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, sulfur trioxide, hydrochloric acid, mercury, and dioxins “into a slaked lime Ca(OH)2 absorbent to form a stable and dry powdery product that is easy to store and transport.”)
“EfW Produces Renewable Energy”
The National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) defines renewable energy as “natural sources or processes that are constantly replenished” such as “sunlight or wind” which “keep shining and blowing, even if their availability depends on time and weather.” The same NRDC page also acknowledges how biomass burning has been labeled as a renewable or “clean” energy source, but in fact, produces “higher carbon emissions than fossil fuels.”
Using this definition alone, waste incineration of any kind does not qualify as a renewable energy source. The waste flow that incinerators depend on is not a “natural process” and often isn’t “constantly replenished.” According to Mike Ewall, founder and director of the Energy Justice Network, municipalities often enter into contracts with incinerators that say “they will send a certain amount of waste to incinerators, meaning that if a city manages to reduce the amount of waste they produce, they still have to pay the same amount of money to the incinerator, and might need to raise taxes to cover those costs.”
Ewall also identifies how Covanta uses the term “Energy-from-Waste facility” instead of “incinerator” in an effort to boost its public image. “They should really be called waste-of-energy facilities,” says Ewall, “They should be composting and recycling the materials that can be, but they just burn everything because it’s cheaper.”
“Ash is A Non-Hazardous Leftover from EfW Process”
Incinerator ash disposed of in landfills and is frequently used as “cover” intended to mitigate the smell and gases released by the decomposing waste. Both bottom ash and fly ash are mixed before disposal in order to dilute the toxicity of the fly ash so that the material can pass the EPA’s Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure (TCLP) and incinerators can avoid the cost of disposing of the ash in specialized hazardous waste landfills. Both can contain toxic heavy metals such as lead and mercury, as well as furans and dioxins that pose serious health risks to landfill workers and those who live close by. But of the two, fly ash is particularly dangerous.
Aging lined landfills are also at risk of leaking rainwater runoff contaminated with ash particles into nearby groundwater sources. Commenting on the ash-dumping practices at the Old Dominion landfill in Richmond, Virginia, professor of environmental chemistry and toxicology Paul Connett said: “The leachate test doesn’t tell you anything about the absolute levels of toxins in the ash, and what the absolute toxicity of the ash is if you were exposed. All that is just not accounted for.”
“EfW Facilities Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions”
This is categorically false. Obviously, no practice that involves large-scale burning can “reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” In fact, on many levels, incinerators release more harmful gasses and toxins that coal plants. What Covanta means is that their facilities have lower emission rates than coal and natural gas plants. But even that isn’t true.
The Energy Justice Network (EJN) specializes in disproving this claim. Their analysis found that:
- Incinerators emit three times as much nitrogen oxide as coal plants do to produce the same amount of energy.
- Incinerators emit 70% more sulfur dioxide as coal plants do to produce the same amount of energy.
- Carbon monoxide is released from trash incinerators at rates twice as high as coal power plants.
- Carbon dioxide (the prime global warming pollutant) is released at a rate of 2.5 times that of coal power plants
- “The industry argues that the “biogenic” portion of these emissions (from organic material) should not count because trees will regrow and take the CO2 back out of the air.”
According to EJN, the incineration industry and the EPA use “creative accounting to make it seem as if the trash incineration industry is actually a climate solution” and effectively “downplay the greenhouse gas emissions from incineration.” On top of that, the EPA’s emission comparisons do not account for the vast differences in size, number, and energy production capacity between incinerators and coal plants. For example: “The average coal power plant in the U.S. is 873 megawatts (MW), and the average trash incinerator only 39 MW.” That’s a big difference.
Waste incineration, even when controlled and monitored, pollutes the air with nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, and other particulate matter, all of which cause numerous health problems if inhaled. Covanta boasting that its facilities emit less than coal plants is kind of pathetic considering that they identify their incinerators as renewable energy sources. Incinerators, coal plants, and landfills are all polluters, and they all cause serious complications in public and environmental health. None of them is the long-term solution to our energy or waste crises.