City sees green in garbage proposal

It sounds too good to be true:

A garbage-to-energy plant that produces clean fuel, reduces global warming gases and leaves nary a toxic trace.

Yet "plasma gasification" is a real, albeit emerging, technology being considered by Sacramento as an alternative to its daily trans-Sierra hauling of waste to a Nevada landfill.

The City Council on Tuesday approved the project in concept on an 8-0 vote and authorized nonbinding negotiations for up to 90 days exclusively with U.S. Science & Technology of Sacramento and its affiliated companies.

The approval was given even though some council members and members of the public expressed concerns about the lack of information about how the technology works and the speed with which the decision was being made.

"I've got a lot of interest in moving forward with something," Mayor Heather Fargo said. She said she would put together a working group that included some council members to inform them and keep them abreast of negotiations.

In a report to the council, city officials tout the high-tech waste treatment as environmentally superior to using landfills.

Others, however, question its energy efficiency and environmental benefits.

"It takes a lot of electricity," Jim Shetler, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District's assistant general manger for energy supply, said in an interview. "Do you use more electricity in the process than you gain from the gas stream that you use to burn and generate electricity?"

SMUD has solicited similar proposals from other companies to expand its portfolio of renewable energy sources.

Plasma gasification is a process that disintegrates solid waste at super-high temperatures using an electrified gas, or plasma.

Organic wastes are vaporized, producing a gas that can be used as clean-burning fuel, project proponents say. Metals and other inorganic materials are reduced to molten bits that can be recycled as filler for asphalt or concrete.

The city report calls the process a "proven" technology.

One environmental group that has investigated gasification and similar waste-reduction technologies said proponents' environmental claims often wither under scrutiny.

"Sacramento should evaluate these proposals very closely because they are incinerators in disguise … they would emit toxic chemicals in the air," said Bradley Angel, executive director of Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, a nonprofit community activist group in San Francisco.

Marty Hanneman, assistant city manager, said city officials have been told that even though the plasma gasification process requires a large amount of power, there would be a "positive net" gain of energy. The deal also would provide revenue opportunities, with the possibility of the sale of the energy or other byproducts, he said.

Hanneman acknowledged in an interview that the process "sounds almost impossible." But, he said, a team of city, county and academic experts looking at gasification believes it is workable and advances Sacramento's quest to become the state's "greenest" city.

"We want to be on the cutting edge," Hanneman said.

As envisioned, the proposed plant would be privately funded.

It probably would cost $150 million to $200 million, and would not tap the general fund or result in higher utility rates, Hanneman said.

The city's only obligation, he said, would be to guarantee a steady steam of municipal waste to the operation.

The proposed gasification plant could process up to 95 percent of the average 146,000 tons of Sacramento waste hauled annually over Donner Pass to the landfill, city officials said.

Having dozens of diesel-spewing trash haulers running 282-mile round trips each night "is not environmentally sound," Hanneman said.

Last year, two companies approached city staff and elected officials with unsolicited garbage-to-energy proposals. The city decided to take a closer look and issued a "request for qualifications."

The response from U.S. Science and Technology was the only one using plasma gasification, a version developed by Westinghouse Plasma Corp.

Intrigued, Hanneman said the panel of experts visited the Westinghouse demonstration facility in Pittsburg and agreed it looked to be the "greenest" option.

Instead of seeking competitive bid for companies using the same technology, Hanneman said the city decided to enter directly into negotiations with U.S. Science and Technology, if the council approved.

Hanneman said he believed the company was the only one to do the process. He said it has not been used elsewhere in the United States, but has operated successfully in Japan and Europe.

Negotiations for the new waste-to-energy process would also include talks with the city's current trash hauler, BLT Enterprises and SMUD.

While the city is locked on gasification, SMUD is keeping its options open to a variety of waste-reduction methods and contractors.

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• Call The Bee's Terri Hardy, (916) 321-1073.