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Waste-to-energy facilities are incinerators that burn waste to create heat or electricity for nearby consumers.
These facilities were first promoted during the energy crisis of the 1970s when fuel costs were rising and there was a fear of fuel shortages.
The Texas Solid Waste Disposal Act ranks waste-to-energy facilities third on the preferred hierarchy of
municipal solid waste management options for Texas. Chambers County and the cities of Center and Carthage use waste-to-energy incinerators for municipal solid waste. There are 16 incinerators
in Texas that are permitted to burn municipal solid waste, including medical waste; however, these facilities do not try to recover energy from waste, and only 10 of the 16 are active.) The
attractiveness of the waste-to-energy management method is its ability to dispose of huge amounts of waste. Yet, currently there is no active movement by local or state governments to develop
more waste-to-energy facilities for municipal solid waste. There are two major reasons for this: high costs and the potential release of pollutants.
As a response to the cost of sending its municipal solid waste to a regional landfill, Chambers County, Texas
began operating a MSW waste-to-energy incinerator in 2002. The facility costs $50,000 a month to operate and it cost over $16 million to build.The community is counting on the incinerator to
pay for itself in the long run.
Historically, it has been difficult for waste-to-energy facilities to compete financially with landfills. In
the past, the cost of a landfill has been relatively less expensive than building and operating a waste-to-energy facility. Often revenues from the sale of steam or electricity do not cover
the costs of building or operating the incinerator facility. Moreover, to make the most of steam or electrical generating capacity, incinerators need to operate at full production, and this
often means that a local community has to buy supplementary waste capacity, often at fees below what the community residents pay.*
The public health and environmental problems associated with waste-to-energy facilities are similar to those
associated with other incinerators: air pollution and groundwater pollution. A by-product of the combustion process is ash, and the finer particles of ash are released through the smoke
stack. Others are captured in the "bag house" as fly ash, and the heavier particles are collected as bottom ash. Depending on the waste stream, toxic chemicals such as lead, cadmium,
arsenic,mercury and dioxin are concentrated in the ash. Along with carbon dioxide and water, these pollutants are released into the air through the stack, potentially threatening air quality
and the health of humans and the environment.* New technology that eliminate many air contaminants from incinerator ash is becoming available, but it is costly.*
Besides the ash released into the air, the ash collected at the incinerator also poses problems. It has
routinely been disposed of in municipal solid waste landfills, raising concern about groundwater contamination. A 1994 U.S. Supreme Court decision ruled that municipal waste incineration ash
that has high levels of lead, cadmium, arsenic, and other contaminants that would render it hazardous waste cannot be disposed of in municipal landfills.* According to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, however, very little of the ash from active Texas incinerators has tested out to be hazardous.*
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