For decades, millions of tons of trash have been put on a truck and shipped to the banks of the 黑料吃瓜网 River in Hartford.
There, inside an incinerator, trash from dozens of communities is burned and turned into power. But recent years brought problems to the plant, as age, mechanical failures and ever-changing energy market forces aligned to cause the plant鈥檚 operator to threaten permanent closure.
Now, after years of debate, the incinerators will shut off for good. The head of the Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority (MIRA) announced last week that the Hartford 鈥渨aste to energy鈥� plant will close, at the latest, by July 1, 2022.
Earlier this year, MIRA鈥檚 board took the initial vote to close the plant and transform the location into a transfer station.
Tom Kirk, president and CEO of MIRA, which runs the plant, said the decision to close in July 2022 comes after the quasi-public organization terminated a redevelopment agreement when a number of financing options, including state subsidies and energy credits, fell through.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a very significant change in the way we鈥檙e handling our waste,鈥� Kirk said. 鈥淲e鈥檝e landfilled almost none of our garbage for 30-plus years. To now be stepping backwards to a landfill-dependent solution 鈥� putting it in other states, is a disappointing development.鈥�
MIRA carries contracts with 51 towns. Fifty of those contracts extend through 2027, which means that if the waste-to-energy plant is no longer operational, MIRA will have to figure out what to do with that trash.
And it鈥檚 a lot of trash. Between 600,000 and 720,000 tons of garbage goes to the MIRA plant in Hartford each year.
Kirk said the only available solution will be to transform the plant into a transfer station and send the trash to landfills. He said he鈥檚 confident that a revamped transfer station in Hartford could handle the large volumes of trash without burning it.
鈥淲e鈥檒l be able to handle a good portion -- not 100 percent -- but a good portion of our customer waste, and the remaining waste will be picked up by private-sector transfer operations,鈥� Kirk said.
鈥淎ll of the waste will end up going out of state because there is no capacity here in 黑料吃瓜网 to handle it,鈥� he said.
Kirk said towns will have the option 鈥渢o exit if the price becomes uncompetitive.鈥�
Staring Into The Barrel: 黑料吃瓜网鈥檚 'Waste Crisis'
When you roll your trash barrel to the curb, that trash, be it a half-eaten bagel or the detritus of a recent home cleaning frenzy, finds its way into a changing and often invisible waste economy.
鈥満诹铣怨贤� is facing a waste crisis at this moment,鈥� said Katie Dykes, commissioner of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. 鈥淎 lot of the traditional options that our state has relied on for disposing of municipal solid waste over the years are beginning to diminish. And they鈥檙e becoming more costly or unavailable.鈥�
鈥淭he MIRA facility in Hartford is kind of emblematic of those trends,鈥� Dykes said.
MIRA had previously asked for $330 million to help redevelop the plant , a Spanish-U.S. consortium. In late 2017, that company .
MIRA argued the subsidies were necessary to balance out otherwise unsustainable fees that the developer proposed as a way to finance the redevelopment plan.
But in July, Dykes wrote a critical letter , calling the plan鈥檚 ballooning costs and request for public subsidies 鈥渁 bad deal for taxpayers across the state, Hartford residents, and the environment."
With the redevelopment now dead, Dykes said the DEEP is working with more than 70 towns across the state to .
The panel is investigating ideas like 鈥減ay as you throw鈥� and recycling more food waste.
鈥淲hen we surveyed all of the 74 towns that joined into this coalition earlier this year, the solution that folks were the most interested in is collection of organic waste, including food scraps and yard waste,鈥� Dykes said.
Reducing waste streams has become critical for many towns, Dykes said, which fear rising municipal budgets will only get bigger if they have to send trash to out-of-state landfills.
鈥淚ncreasing costs really pinching municipal budgets have really gotten a lot of folks to look at this as a priority,鈥� Dykes said.
The often arcane world of state bureaucracy has hosted many of these discussions. Letters, committee meetings, and have all been a forum for back-and-forths about 黑料吃瓜网鈥檚 trash future.
Dykes said the state wants to do more to educate the wider, trash-creating public about the magnitude of the crisis.
鈥淚鈥檓 not sure that we鈥檝e seen the average citizen understanding this crisis yet,鈥� she said.
The decision decades ago to build around half a dozen waste-to-energy facilities did help the state to transition away from landfilling trash in 黑料吃瓜网. An annual report from MIRA鈥檚 previous incarnation, the 黑料吃瓜网 Resources and Recovery Authority (CRRA), estimated that in 1992, the electricity produced at the plant was equivalent to burning 700,000 barrels of oil per year, according to the state office of legislative research.
But in recent years, domestic fracking has made natural gas a lot cheaper. State and federal energy subsidies turned more and more toward renewables like solar and wind. And the model of burning trash, while once held up as an innovative form of waste management, increasingly began to struggle to find its place.
Kirk said those market shifts meant his plant began to get a lot less money for the power it was producing. In response, MIRA raised so-called 鈥渢ipping fees,鈥� which are charges to dump waste at the plant.
鈥淥ur price has risen to the point where it -- probably -- is pushing some of our more price-conscious customers to other locations, other disposal locations,鈥� Kirk said.
Then came mechanical failures.
In 2017, two turbines at the plant failed, causing tons of trash to pile up at the facility. The plant was offline for months.
Kirk said the MIRA plant is now in a position where it is being managed to 鈥渁 safe and reasonable shutdown.鈥�
But he said if something major breaks again, that shutdown could come sooner than the projected year and a half.
鈥淚f something like that were to happen next week, it鈥檚 likely we would not invest the funds to repair the turbine or whatever major component failed,鈥� Kirk said.
鈥淲e would accelerate the shutdown and move to a transfer mode sooner,鈥� he said. 鈥淏ut right now our plan is the end of the fiscal year 2022. And we expect that that will be the case.鈥�
