TIn Onondaga County, our trash does not go to a landfill within the county line or travel out of the area. Instead, for the last 20 years, the Onondaga County Resource Recovery Agency has burned our trash to create energy.

With a new proposal to create a partnership with Cortland County’s municipal waste agency, we might begin burning our neighbor’s trash as well.

Though the partnership could bring economic benefits to our area, it is imperative that extensive study goes into the existing facility, along with study of any additions, before any decision is made. With this, public opinion is also necessary.

It may seem simple to burn trash, but there are even more costs and benefits surrounding this proposal. With such a complex issue, it is crucial that the county governments conduct more research and testing, as well as reach out to keep the public informed. The resulting decision is most important for the future of our health and happiness in Onondaga County.

While it is true that Cortland is in the midst of an environmental review of the proposal, and Onondaga County may have one planned for the future, it is still widely unknown what the details of the plan will entail for not only our local environment, but also the people.

Even with education campaigns provided by OCRRA, it’s not a well-known fact that our trash is incinerated.

There are benefits to incineration. The waste management technique is definitely a step above compiling our trash in landfills. With this, the waste burned generates electricity, bringing a local source of power to our area for the last two decades.

Taking Cortland’s trash, an estimated 23,000 to 28,000 tons per year, could result in $500,000 more annually through electricity sales, according to an Aug. 14 article in the Post-Standard. For a plant that lost $2.5 million last year, this money is desperately needed, the Post-Standard also reported.

In return for burning Cortland’s garbage, all resulting ash would be trucked back to landfills in their county.

While these are enticing benefits, there still are a number of drawbacks.

This proposal between counties would go back on one of the basic compromises that led to the creation of the plant itself — Onondaga County would never truck in garbage from neighboring counties. This promise, made by county executives at the time, is said to be outdated, County Executive Joanie Mahoney said in an interview with the Post-Standard in August.

Mahoney believes that because OCRRA has been so successful with many of its recycling processes, less waste has traveled to our county’s plant to be burned, creating a strain on the business.

She also added that by accepting more garbage from a neighboring county, it would decrease the chance that the owners of the plant would burn more undesirable objects, such as tires and medical waste.

While Mahoney may be thinking about the future of the trash-burning plant, any decision made would go against an important agreement still in the county’s memory.

Along with the increase in trash burning, moving trash and ash from one place to another would also increase transportation between the two counties. Not only would this cost more, but also more trucking would increase carbon emissions, which would exacerbate global climate change.

Finally, research surrounding emissions from waste-to-energy plants has had mixed results. While some in the field declare that filtration, scrubbers and other containment processes capture any toxic emissions before they run rampant in our community, others believe that there is still a considerable amount of emissions that are detrimental to environmental and human health.

Meg Callaghan is a senior environmental studies major at SUNY-ESF. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at mlcallag@syr.edu.

 

 

Published on March 6, 2014 at 1:00 am