SUBHEAD: Why the Mayor's curbside recycling & WTE campaign promises will fail Kauai.By David Ward on 12 August 2009
Have you been wondering about why our Mayor, Bernard Carvalho Jr. seems to have a disconnect between his stated support for curbside recycling while not proposing any funding for a MRF and a recycling coordinator? Wonder no more. This appears to be clearly on track towards failure. Of course, curbside recycling will not work without a MRF and a Recycling Coordinator, two critical components. And why, you ask, should curbside recycling be designed to fail? Because all our trash is not enough to feed the waste to energy incinerator (WTE).
Failure is the best way to silence the local environmentalists and still claim to have met campaign promises. When asked about why the County chose not to have a Recycling Coordinator position filled and build a MRF, the mayor's response: "...the bottom line is to do the low hanging fruit first, but also keep looking at the bigger picture.”
Looking at the bigger picture is what we all need to do. Connecting the dots has not been made easy because the Mayor and the powers at KIUC do not want to feel the heat from their incinerator plans until funding is locked in. Thanks to Ken Stokes for pointing out that KIUC has been hiding the ball until forced by the PUC to post their IRP on their web site.
Black & Veatch submitted their Integrated Resource Plan to Kaua’i Island Utility Cooperative.
Table 1-6. KIUC Preferred Expansion Plan. | Timing | Unit | Nameplate MW | Firm Capacity |
| Continuous | Demand Side Mgt. | -4.34mw by 2028 | -4.34mw by 2028 |
| 2011 | Kekaha Landfill | 1.60 mw | 1.60 mw |
| 2012 | 1x1 Combined Cycle | 17.37 mw | 17.37 mw |
| 2013 | Wind | 10.50 mw | 0.00 mw |
| 2013 | Direct Fired Biomass | 20.00 mw | 20.00 mw |
| 2015 | Hydro (mult. units) | 11.00 mw | 11.00 mw |
| 2015 | MSW Mass Burn | 7.30 mw | 7.30 mw |
1.9.6 Mass Burn Waste to Energy Project
The 7.3 MW mass burn waste to energy project is in the early development phase. Although project development work for this particular project has not started, there have been other developments on Kauai that directly impact the project:
In March 2007, the County released an integrated solid waste management plan that, in part, recommended the construction of a waste-to-energy plant to help handle the island's refuse.
Despite these positive signs, development of the waste to energy project has not been active, and the project is not forecast to come online in the IRP until 2015.
Despite the long lead-time, KIUC will need to begin working closely with the County and other interested stakeholders to pursue development of this option in a manner that balances economically.
Randy Hee at the KIUC Quarterly Update on 04 August 2009 gave some indication that there was now little confidence in their Preferred Expansion Plan due to the current unanticipated economic down turn. He said that any WTE project would have to funded and built by Kauai County.
One has to wonder if the leadership at KIUC or in the Office of the Mayor has read the first report released on the the Kaua`i Energy Sustainability Plan that was posted 04 June 2009 by the SENTECH Hawaii Team. It is very clear from reading this report that there will not be a County/KIUC WTE in 2015.
The Basics of Waste to Energy on Kaua`i report states that : Incineration is the only waste treatment technology now in use on a utility scale in the USA. No new WTE plants have come online in the USA since year 2000.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requires new facilities to use the "maximum achievable control technology." Meeting this standard takes the development of new WTE projects out of the realm of financial viability.
Incineration WTE must take advantage of economies of scale to be cost effective, meaning that they need to process 500-1000 tons per day or more of trash. This is significantly more waste than Kauai currently or will ever produce. in 2005 the Kekaha landfill received 89,156 tons of municipal solid waste (MSW), for an average of 244 tons per day. If all the recycled materials were added to the burn pile, only a total of 319 tons would have been available to incinerate. A global economic depression and peak oil will all but guaranty that we will have declining amount of trash to dispose of.
8. Timeframe
The lifetime of many WTE plants is 25-30 years or more. Such long-term contracts may be inadvisable for communities and waste generators as there may be better options that may become available in the shorter term. Many alternative technologies such as gasification and plasma gasification remain under development and significant advances could emerge sooner than 25 years.
The WTE process is far from clean and its track record in terms of energy efficiency and emissions can hardly be considered green. Not to mention the fact that it encourages the throwaway society that the environmental movement has been trying so hard to change.
The mayor's dual track planning for our trash is headed for a train wreck. The plan to start curbside recycling pickup in Lihue is clearly putting the cart before the horse. The plan is to start curbside recycling pickup without a single point person to provide oversight and management of the development of a MRF and a multi-material composting operation. These projects will not move forward in a reasonable time frame and will almost certainly cost significantly more than waiting until all critical facilities and personnel are in place.
The current plan is to ship our trash to Honolulu for sorting and recycling. So we would be shipping trash, and jobs, and our tax revenue off island only to satisfy a campaign promise. This out of sequence effort is a guaranteed failure and could insure that island wide curbside recycling will be delayed indefinitely.
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