Possible trash transfer in Hampton Roads
Most of region’s garbage is burned. In a few years, it could head to a landfill.
PORTSMOUTH — If you live in Chesapeake, Norfolk, Portsmouth or Virginia Beach, every time you take out the trash, you’re probably contributing to national defense. Unlike most other Americans’ trash, the vast majority of waste from those cities doesn’t end up buried in a landfill. It’s burned at a waste-to-energy facility in Portsmouth that creates steam the Norfolk Naval Shipyard purchases.
That’s right. All the pizza boxes, takeout containers, broken furniture and casualties of annual spring cleaning that you toss out become a power source for shipbuilders at the U.S. Navy’s oldest shipyard to build and repair vessels.
For now.
A contractor recently broke ground on a natural gas-powered steam and energy plant at the shipyard. Once finished — 2024 is the plan — the plant will enable the shipyard to produce nearly all the steam and energy it needs.
That could mean much more trash — hundreds of millions of pounds a year — going to a regional landfill in Suffolk within a few years.
The Navy is the only customer buying steam from the Portsmouth waste-to-energy facility where most of South Hampton Roads’ trash goes, which is owned and operated by a New Hampshire-based company called Wheelabrator. The Navy’s shift to generating its own energy will have ripple effects on the firm and the cities whose trash powers the shipyard.
Tons and tons of trash
The quasi-public Southeastern Public Service Authority, or SPSA, annually handles about a half-million tons of trash from Chesapeake, Franklin, Isle of Wight County, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Southampton County, Suffolk and Virginia Beach.
For all those localities except Portsmouth, the trash collected by city or county garbage trucks and several private waste management companies goes to the locality’s SPSA transfer station. Workers there load the trash into 18-wheelers. Portsmouth doesn’t have its own transfer station — its trucks take trash directly to the Wheelabrator facility.
In the western portion of SPSA’s coverage area, the trash from the transfer stations goes to its Suffolk Regional Landfill. In the eastern portion — the state’s three largest cities plus Portsmouth — it all goes to Wheelabrator.
About 85% of the region’s trash is burned at that facility. While that significantly reduces the amount that goes into the landfill, Wheelabrator still produces about 160,000 tons of ash a year.
The waste-to-energy facility was built in the 1970s by the Navy. SPSA took over in the 1990s, and Wheelabrator purchased it about 10 years ago.
A surprise move by the Navy
While the Navy and SPSA have long been partners, the move from Wheelabrator was a surprise to the regional trash authority.
“It caught SPSA off guard,” said C.W. McCoy, one of Portsmouth’s representatives on its board. “This was a Department of Defense decision.”
McCoy said the authority caught wind of plans for the shipyard when staff noticed the Navy was seeking proposals for its own power generating plant.
A shipyard spokesman did not return a request for comment.
The shipyard wants to install two natural gas-powered turbines — each capable of generating 7 megawatts of electricity — as well as boilers, heat-recovery generators and one 2.4-megawatt steam turbine. The project would not only allow the yard to generate its own steam, but supply most of the electricity the yard now receives from Dominion Energy.
The project faced concerns from the community, including the Portsmouth branch of the NAACP, but ultimately the State Air Pollution Control Board ruled the new facility would not boost pollutants — including sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide — above air-quality standards.
Ameresco, a Massachusetts-based “renewable energy and energy efficiency company,” is building the plant and broke ground Feb. 5. In a news release, the company said its contract with the Navy totals $173 million. Under the contract, the Navy doesn’t pay up front, instead using savings from the plant to pay over time.
Portsmouth faces the biggest hit
The project creates uncertainty all around. While the Navy’s agreement to buy steam from Wheelabrator ends in 2024, SPSA has a contract to bring trash to Wheelabrator until 2027.
In a statement, Wheelabrator said it remains “actively engaged in conversations with the U.S. Navy regarding a potential extension of our agreement to supply steam to the shipyard. As those conversations continue, we remain committed to providing the region with essential waste management services that benefit the community and the environment.”
It’s unclear if Wheelabrator could continue to operate its Portsmouth facility without the Navy as a customer.
So city officials and SPSA have started to figure out what to do if Wheelabrator ceases operations.
Portsmouth would see the harshest effects. McCoy, a former city manager in Portsmouth, pointed out that Wheelabrator is a major source of business taxes in the city. Portsmouth has a high concentration of federal land — including the land the waste-to-energy facility sits on — that is tax exempt, and the city often struggles with generating revenue outside of its real estate taxes, which are the highest in the region.
On top of the potential revenue hit, losing the facility would leave Portsmouth with no place to deposit its trash. Liesl DeVary, executive director of SPSA, said the city could take the trash to another city’s transfer station or directly to the Suffolk landfill. That creates additional travel costs and puts more garbage trucks onto busy roads.
At a City Council work session, McCoy advised Portsmouth to explore potential locations for a transfer station.
Burle Stromberg, the interim city attorney and Portsmouth’s other SPSA representative, said the transfer station will be one of the first issues for incoming city manager Angel Jones. Stromberg said city officials and SPSA have discussed possibilities but never came to any decisions.
“We have to do something in the next year or so” to prepare for when the Navy stops buying steam, Stromberg said. “But it’s hard because everything is so up in the air right now.”
Plans at the landfill
The other cities whose trash is now burned would see very little immediate effect if Wheelabrator ceased operating. City garbage trucks would go to transfer stations as usual, but the trucks that haul the trash away would head to Suffolk rather than Portsmouth.
The landfill just north of the Great Dismal Swamp covers 833 acres split into 12 cells, four of which are full and two of which are taking trash now.
Those fifth and sixth cells opened in 2000 and 2006, respectively, and are expected to last until 2030. If all the region’s trash started going into the landfill, that could accelerate the need to open cell seven, which would be filled by 2035, DeVary said.
SPSA’s been preparing to open cell seven for about 30 years, but there are still significant steps before that can happen. The Suffolk City Council has decided a new access road must open so it’s safer for drivers to get to the landfill and so travelers on Route 58 have a place to make a U-turn.
As it is, garbage trucks and others going to the landfill from eastbound lanes have to use a cut-through on the median and cross three lanes of traffic going 60 mph.
“It’s a scary road,” DeVary said. “I call it the autobahn.” The new road would pass over Route 58.
That project will cost $40 million, and SPSA has to foot the bill. DeVary has proposed increasing the fee that localities pay at transfer stations to cover it.
While the Navy’s planned power plant will cause more trash to go into the landfill, it may end up being a cost savings for SPSA.
DeVary noted it’s more expensive for SPSA to burn its trash to create power than use the landfill, but she prefers to find alternatives to putting the trash in the ground.
“The landfill wins awards and is up to environmental standards, but it’s better to make use of the waste,” she said.