Almost time to put up or shut up, city tells Plasco
The clock is ticking on the city’s provisional deal with Plasco Energy Group to start turning Ottawa’s garbage into energy, and the city reminded the startup of it in a letter Friday, says the chair of city council’s environment committee.
River Coun. Maria McRae tweeted the word in the evening: City manager Kent Kirkpatrick sent a letter to Plasco “starting the 60-day notice period” to terminate the contract between the city and the company, she wrote.
Under the terms of a deal the city and Plasco signed in December 2011, entrepreneur Rod Bryden’s much-touted waste-to-energy company had until last March to secure financing for a multimillion-dollar processing plant it promises to build near the municipal landfill on Trail Road.
It had to have drawn on the money and signed at least $5-million worth of construction contracts. It’s a way of making sure the company has investors and lenders who believe in its “plasmafication” process, which promises to turn any random load of residential trash into an energyrich gas and a small amount of inert, glassy slag.
As the March deadline approached, Plasco had satisfied none of the conditions, but Bryden assured councillors he was getting there, so they gave him an extension until the end of August. And that extension is running out.
The environment committee McRae chairs has a meeting scheduled for Aug. 22 and wants the information it needs to recommend whether to go ahead or not by Aug. 15. That means the 60-day countdown has to begin.
Under the terms of the deal, the city will pay Plasco $83.25 a tonne for garbage it processes. That’s double the operating cost to landfill it at Trail Road, but the costs of the dump don’t include the financial price and political angst involved in trying to find a new place to put garbage once Trail Road fills up. Plasco is supposed to put that date off 28 years.
The city rushed to sign the original agreement with Bryden in 2011 because he told city councillors he was in a hurry to get all the financial details nailed down. Mayor Jim Watson said when city council granted Plasco the extension that he wouldn’t look kindly on a request for another one.