State needs long-term solution to trash problem
Connecticut has a trash problem, and it’s time to make a new plan.
Today, approximately 70 towns and cities across Connecticut send their waste to the trash-burning power plant in Hartford’s South Meadows. It’s not a city of Hartford facility. It is owned and operated by a state-created entity called the Materials Innovation & Recycling Authority (MIRA).
This trash plant occupies roughly 80 acres of riverfront land near the intersection of two major highways and an airport. Because it’s owned by a quasi-state entity, it’s tax exempt, and it now pays only a fraction of the payments-in-lieu-of-taxes it once paid. It pumps out pollution into a community with some of the highest asthma rates in the state.
As mayor of Hartford, I care about those things, and our community does, too. But even if you don’t, you should care about this: The facility is old, obsolete and falling apart. The economics of trash-to-energy don’t work without substantial subsidy. And there’s no real plan in place for dealing with the fact that this facility has reached the end of its life.
Two years ago, the state’s Department of Energy & Environmental Protection directed MIRA to negotiate with a private firm, Sacyr Rooney, over a deal to upgrade the facility. The deal was supposed to result in hundreds of millions of dollars of private investment, bringing new, environmentally friendly technology to the site. I believe those negotiations will fail, because the fundamentals don’t make sense. If the negotiations keep moving, it will be because the deal no longer resembles what was originally proposed.
Either way, the most likely outcome is that MIRA will seek to issue state-backed bonds or obtain state funding to keep the current facility running for 20 or 30 more years.
That’s a bad idea.
For one thing, we shouldn’t keep burning trash on riverfront land in the Capital City. The fact that we’ve done it for decades does not justify doing it for decades more. From an economic development standpoint or an environmental standpoint, it just doesn’t make sense.
For another thing, keeping the existing facility running for more than a few years will require a massive investment. But instead of investing in a lasting, next-generation solution, we’d be pouring a taxpayer fortune into an obsolete, unreliable facility. So what should be done?
For now, if we want to avoid hauling all of that trash to out-of-state landfills, Connecticut will have to keep patching the facility and keep it running for a few years, while working on a long-term solution. There’s just no way around it.
To identify the long-term solution, the state should immediately convene a task force to identify the most environmentally friendly, economically feasible options for 21st-century waste disposal in Connecticut. They will need to work fast, and all options, all technologies and all locations should be on the table.
DEEP and the state should give real deference and weight to the recommendations of that task force, and the legislature should create a streamlined review and permitting process, so that any new facility — or facilities, since decentralized disposal might make more sense — can be built as quickly as possible.
And we should all recognize that any environmentally responsible solution could require significant state investment, even if it’s done with private partners. So while we’re talking infrastructure finance, we’d better start talking trash, too.
One last point: if a serious planning process puts the state’s trash facility back in the Capital City, let’s at least locate it next to the MDC’s regional sewage treatment plant, so we ruin one area of riverfront land instead of two.