Sheer "folly": Why I'm for the Waste-to-Energy Facility

Cartoon lampooning the 1867 treaty
with Russia that got us Alaska

“Admiral Fox, on his return from his visit to Russia, told a friend in this city that Prince Gortschakoff had said to him in St. Petersburg that the territory which Russia owned in America was not only valueless to his Government, but was an expense and trouble which the Czar would gladly be rid of, and assured him that Russia would be willing to cede the territory to the United States as a gift if it were desirable to the Republic. This is certain. It is equally certain that Secretary Seward knew of the fact. Unfortunately for our Treasury and our tax-payers, there is no diplomatic glory to be got out of accepting a gift.” New York Tribune, April 9, 1867

They called it “Seward's folly” and “Seward's icebox”, the treaty Secretary of State William Seward negotiated with Russia in 1867 that for the princely sum of $7.2 million dollars (or roughly 2 cents an acre) we end up with Alaska. What a waste of the taxpayers' money, some claimed. What a dumb, short-sighted idea, others mocked. Clearly, posterity views that moment in history a little different than some of the folks back then did. A few weeks ago, the Barron County Executive Committee sent shock waves through the area when they announced that they had voted unanimously to shut down the Waste-to-Energy facility (aka, “the Barron Co incinerator”) in Almena in 90 days. Their primary motivation for doing so is simple: the Waste-to-Energy plant is losing money which creates a strain on the county's budget. What's more, it's in need of serious upgrades. Might this be the time to get out of the trash-burning business?

The incinerator was opened in 1986 at a cost of little over $6 million and by county ordinance all the trash in the county has been going there ever since averaging out to 100 tons a day. The stuff is

This is something like a Star Trek replicator...sorta

burned and then converted into steam which is sold to Saputo Cheese, the fourth largest cheese maker in the world, who just completed a major addition to their plant right across the road. It seems almost symbiotic, doesn't it? We make the garbage, the plant burns it, converts it into electricity which Saputo buys to make their cheese. How cool is that? When we moved to Chetek back in 1991 my dad jokingly began referring to me as a “jack pine” savage living up here in the woods. My folks live just outside of Madison, the city of the perpetually offended, and in a county that likes to see itself as progressive and environmentally friendly. And yet where does Dane County's garbage end up? In a hole in the ground. And they call us “savage”!

Dane County landfill

The fact of the matter is our Waste-to-Energy facility is the only one of its kind in the entire state (La Crosse has an incinerator as well but that is owned by Northern States Power). Everybody else is sending their trash to a landfill somewhere. We're a small county with approximately 45,000 residents generating 35,000 tons of garbage each year. Imagine more populous counties like Dane, Milwaukee, and Brown and the kind of trash created in those places! Yet all of their unrecyclable garbage is headed to a hole. So are we dumber than a box of hammers to stick with a technology that works but is also pricey to use or are we smarter than the average bear? I'd like to think the latter. Not only does it resonate with our society-wide felt desire to live more environmentally friendly lives but in the long run its financially less risky.

Why isn't everyone burning their trash? Simple: it's cheaper to send our garbage to a hole. Way cheaper. But here's the thing: the conventional wisdom on landfills are that there are essentially two kinds: one's that leak and one's that will leak. And when they leak someone is gotta pay for the clean-up and the way the law is written that someone is us. In other words, when we choose to bury our garbage instead of burning it, we own it forever. The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) was passed in 1976 as an amendment to the Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1965 because of growing national concern over the improper management of both hazardous and non-hazardous waste. Buried within this piece of legislation was the establishment of a overarching management system called, appropriately, Cradle to Grave. What it means is that even when you send your garbage away to be land-filled you still own it. It may be out of sight and out of mind but if that landfill fails - and we are reasonably promised that at some time, it will - your municipality is on the hook to help pay for the clean-up. Speaking only for Chetek in my mind this sounds eerily like the Central States' Pension Fund fiasco: it doesn't matter that we did nothing to cause that fund from failing but we're still liable, says the Teamsters, to pay for our fair share of the red ink it's drowning in. 

The W-2-E facility is going to need a new stack

Whether we burn the trash or bury it, we're going to have to keep paying to have our garbage disposed of. There is, after all, no free lunch. At last Tuesday night's County Board meeting, County Administrator Jeff French made the argument that a big reason that the Waste-to-Energy facility continues to lose money is that the tipping fees, the fees paid to the county to get rid of our garbage, are way too low and need to be adjusted. If the county board heeds his advice, our garbage fees will be going up. So, if you notice a change in your bill in the next few months you'll know why. If the Executive Committee, however, is insistent that the best thing to do is to shut her down, Chetek and every other municipality in the county is going to have to contract with, presumably, the Sarona landfill as well as adding a liability fee of some kind in the eventuality that the thing fails at some unknown date in the future.

I've been coaching Cross Country at the high school for nine seasons now. Several years ago I had the joy of coaching a young man with autism. Alex would have these “mantras” he would repeat regularly at practice that I came to refer to as “Alexisms.” “Difficult things are hard,” he would say (and isn't he right?!) One of the Alexisms I think on a lot is “It's not good to be dumb.” You're so right, Alex. As the county considers what to do with the Waste-to-Energy facility, whether to shut it down or fix what needs to be fixed, the hope is they'll keep the long view in mind and do what's economically right and environmentally sound for us now and for our posterity. 

If we don't burn it, it'll be going in the ground somewhere
and some of this stuff will be there a thousand years from now