Wheelabrator Incinerator Coming to Powell River?

In case you haven't seen this email [below] yet i thought you and yours would be interested. please forward all of this

plus this incinerator nugget from our local Not-The-NewsPaper.

Last night’s Wheelabrator Letter-Writing Meeting was a little rambling.  It seemed to me, the bottom lines were:

(1.)   It might be premature to write letters to Wheelabrator telling them that we don’t want them in our town, because city council has not yet officially put a Waste-to-Energy plant for the Mill Site, on the table.  Plus, folks wanted to collect more information about the city council’s plans, before confronting them.

(2.)   We might be better served for the moment to put our energy into demanding a complete toxic waste clean-up of the mill site, before Catalyst has no money left to do it.(What better use of the money and/or credits Mayor Formosa is trying to secure for Catalyst from the Province? --Wendy)

(3.)   We might want to throw efforts behind Powell River’s becoming a Zero Waste town.

Things I learned:

• It is possible that the efforts to keep the mill open, even with just a few jobs, have actually been to prevent Calalyst or the City from having to deal with the extensive Toxic Waste Clean-up that will be required there, once the mill shuts down, more than to protect the jobs.
• Who would be responsible for the cost of this clean-up -- Catalyst, the city, or the incoming Wheelabrator Plant?
• Would an incoming Wheelabrator Plant be bonded to guarantee a clean-up of all toxic waste (“remediation”) left by its processes?
• It is believed that city hall has been discussing a Waste-to-Energy plant for the last 3 years “on camera,” and out of public sight.
• It might be useful to obtain records of these “on camera” discussions from Marie Claxton, through a Freedom of Information Act request (no one volunteered to do this, however).
• City Council sees opening a plant in 2016, which gives us some time to mount a fight.
• Three other towns are vying for the Wheelabrator Plant to process ½ million tons of Vancouver Trash each year:  Tsawwassen, White Rock, and ---?.
• Since all three of these towns are closer to Vancouver, they have a greater chance of receiving the plant, because of reduced transportation costs, which may protect us.
• While it has been promised that medical waste will not be included, it is expected that medical waste will be added into the contract, once the plant is up and running.
• Wheelabrator has caused major environmental damage in several plants around the world, two of which are
• Saugus Wheelabrator Settlement
• Burlington, Masschusetts, Wheelabrator Settlement
• Wheelabrator has also been caught scamming one city for at least $380,000 for the year 2006, and several millions of dollars over the life of the contract:
• Spokane Wheelabrator Metal Recovery Scam
• Trash & toxins left after burning are:
• 1% fly ash, which turns back into dioxins & furans after it cools leaving the stack (air pollution!)
• 30% bottom ash, which must be disposed of SOMEwhere, on the mill site?  Somewhere else in our town?
• “Gasification” and “pyrolysis” are still Incineration.  You can call horse manure “road apples,” but it’s still horse manure.
• Problems with these Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Incinerators are described here:
• Global Alliance for Incineration Alternatives -- ISSUES
• Incinerators: Myths vs. Facts
• Waste-to-energy incineration is both noxious and expensive
• Grassroots groups voice concern over “waste to energy” incinerators in India
• If Powell River were to become a ZERO WASTE town before 2016, i.e. everything recycled or composted, then all residents would be very resistant to having other people’s trash brought here to be burned.
• According to Dr. Paul Connett, a U.S. expert on incineration, for the taxpayers an incinerator is an “economic disaster,” but for a few people an incinerator is a “gravy train”. That “gravy train” is on a collision course with communities across Canada, and it will be up to an informed public to stop it. As one speaker put it at the November industry conference: “The inability to manage public perception issues is what stops [WTE incineration] projects, not the government approvals process.”