Bryden won’t say if deadline will be met

City wants proof of Plasco financing by Aug. 31 for deal

The high-tech impresario behind Plasco Energy Group won’t say whether he thinks the company can meet an Aug. 31 deadline set by the city for proving it has the financing to build a major garbage-disposal facility in Ottawa.

But Rod Bryden does say he definitely won’t be meeting a deadline a month earlier the city wants to set so councillors can make an informed decision about killing the contract the City of Ottawa has with Bryden’s company.

“I don’t want to engage in providing information about financing prior to the time I provide it to the city,” Bryden said Monday.

The city announced Friday it sent the Plasco chief executive a letter giving the company 60 days to show it has the necessary financing in place. The company must also show it has signed at least $5 million worth of contracts for construction of the facility, a condition built into Plasco’s December 2011 deal with the city for disposal of up to 150,000 tonnes a year of residential garbage.

The deadline in the contract is Aug. 31. But the letter from Kent Kirkpatrick says city council wants to make a decision on whether to end the contract at a meeting a few days earlier, on Aug. 28. Its environment committee meets to give a recommendation on what to do Aug. 22. City rules say an agenda for that meeting has to be published Aug. 15.

“In order to ensure that the report is available for release on this date, Plasco must provide the necessary documentation to the City for verification on or before July 31, 2013,” the letter says.

No, Bryden said in an interview.

He expects to give the city and councillors the information they demand by Aug. 21.

That is before the environment committee meets.

Beyond that, all Bryden would say about finding the money and letting contracts is “it’s going fine.”

Plasco proposes to use “plasma gasification” technology to dispose of waste, cracking garbage apart at the molecular level via extremely high temperatures and turning the trash into a burnable gas, with a small amount of inert glassy slag left over.

The city would pay $83.25 per tonne of waste disposed; that’s double the operating costs at the city’s Trail Road landfill, but would put off an expense of hundreds of millions of dollars to open a new landfill when that facility is full.

That’s if Plasco’s process works, and if investors and lenders are willing to fund it. The contractual clause activated by the city’s letter is meant to kill the project if Plasco can’t get it off the ground. The company has already had the deadline extended once; Kirkpatrick’s letter says that if Plasco wants another one, it’ll have to give city officials a comprehensive presentation on why — also by the end of July.

The entrepreneur and former owner of the Ottawa Senators has said repeatedly in the past that Plasco was close to achieving important milestones, which proved to take months.

But other work is proceeding, he said.

“We are fully into all the work you need to do to deliver this Ottawa project. There are studies underway as to air quality, there are studies, I think completed, as to the hydrology under the site,” he said. (The property to be used for the plant, close to the landfill, belongs to the city and as a landlord it wants assurances the plant can operate without fouling its surroundings.)

One major stumbling block in the past has been getting a deal with the provincial government to sell electricity the plant generates to the grid. Bryden said Plasco doesn’t have a signed deal with the Ontario Power Authority for that, but does have a set of clear conditions to meet.

“The OPA typically doesn’t enter into a contract until the plant they are entering into a contract with is operational,” Bryden said.

A test facility, also near Trail Road, has been closed for months for upgrades after running trials meant to satisfy investors that Plasco’s wasteto-energy process really works. It is expected to resume operating by the end of July, Bryden said.