Follow up from public hearing regarding the Title V permit for Covanta

On December 11 there was a public hearing about the Title V permit for Covanta.

The meeting was recorded and is playing on WPAA but it is also on demand at WPAA. Please go to the link and go to video on demand which is located on top of the screen. The video is on page two. http://www.wpaa.tv/#

The full video is a little over two hours so some of the important issues discussed were:

1.The entire plant is NOT tested every year but on a rotational basis so each stack is tested once every three years.

2. Positive burn and fires which happen are fires where the emissions leave the plant before they are scrubbed so unknown pollutants are affecting the area.

3. There have been no water tests of Dioxin in approximately twenty years. This means our public drinking water and waterways such as Wharton Brook State Park which people fish and swim in have not been tested for Dioxins.

There is a public comment period until December 30 2013.
I would hope that you would watch the video and share your concerns with EPA and DEEP. Lakiesha Christopher (Connecticut DEEP) is the contact below is her e-mail address.

Lakiesha.Christopher@ct.gov

Notice of Public Hearing - Applicant: Covanta Projects of Wallingford, L.P.

Notice of Public Hearing

Applicant: Covanta Projects of Wallingford, L.P.
Application No. 201207877
City/Town: Wallingford, CT

The Commissioner of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection ("DEEP") hereby gives notice of an informational hearing to take public comments concerning the draft Title V permit for Covanta Projects of Wallingford, L.P and shall be held on December 11, 2013 as more thoroughly described herein.

Application No.:	201207877
Applicant's Name and Address:	Covanta Projects of Wallingford, L.P. 530 South Cherry Street, Wallingford, CT
Contact Name/Phone/Email:	Mr. Matthew Venturi, 860-589-6470, MVenturi@CovantaEnergy.com,
Type of Permit/Activity:	Informational public hearing to take public comments concerning the draft Title V permit
Relevant statute(s)/Regulation:	RCSA sections 22a-174-22a(c) and 22a-174-33
Type of Facility:	Resource Recovery

NOTICE OF HEARING

DEEP will hold an informational public hearing on this application on December 11, 2013 at 6:30pm at the Wallingford Council Chambers, Town Hall, 45 South Main Street, Wallingford, CT. The hearing will consist of informational presentations by the parties and the collection of public comment on the record.

The informational hearing will be moderated and recorded by a DEEP hearing officer and will proceed in the following order: presentations from the panel, including the applicant, DEEP, and petitioners; a 15-minute break for informal questions and answers between members of the public and the panel which will not be recorded nor be part of the hearing record; and then the continuation of the informational hearing to receive oral and written comments from members of the public. Comments will be heard in the order in which members of the public sign up at the informational hearing.

Written comments will be accepted at the informational hearing and until the close of business on December 20, 2013, when the hearing record will close. All written comments submitted after December 11, 2013 shall be submitted to the Engineering & Enforcement Division of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, 5th Floor, 79 Elm Street, Hartford, Connecticut 06106.

Once the hearing record is closed, DEEP staff will prepare a response to comments document and DEEP’s recommendation, along with a proposed Title V permit, will be sent to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Region 1 for consideration and the issuance of a determination.

Members of the public should refer to the DEEP Calendar of Events at www.ct.gov/deep/calendar for the official schedule in this matter, including cancellations, or other schedule alterations.

The Title V permit application and draft permit may be examined at the DEEP Public file room, at the address mentioned above. Interested persons who wish to obtain more information regarding the application and draft permit may do so by contacting Lakiesha Christopher of the Engineering and Enforcement Division by mail at the address above, by electronic mail to lakiesha.christopher@ct.gov, or by calling (860) 424-4152.

The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection is an Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Employer that is committed to complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act. To request an accommodation contact us at (860) 418-5910 or deep.accommodations@ct.gov.

Published in The Record-Journal on November 8, 2013

Draft Permit (PDF)
Draft Technical Support Document (PDF)

WALLINGFORD – REMINDER - Covanta, Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) to hold meeting TONIGHT

The state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and Covanta, the owners of the town’s trash-to-energy plant, will hold an informational public meeting TONIGHT October 4th at 7PM in the Wallingford Town Hall to answer questions about the facility.

The public is invited and encouraged to attend.

WALLINGFORD - Covanta, Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) to hold meeting

The state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and Covanta, the owners of the town’s trash-to-energy plant, will hold an informational public meeting on October 4th at 7PM in the Wallingford Town Hall to answer questions about the facility.

The public is invited and encouraged to attend.

Wallingford Trash plant tour and Q&A session with staff, DEEP set for Oct. 4

As published in the Record Journal Wednesday September 26, 2012

By Laurie Rich Salerno
Record-Journal staff
lsalerno@record-journal.com
(203) 317-2235
Twitter:@LaurieSalernoRJ

WALLINGFORD – Ever wonder what happens to your trash when it leaves the curb? On Thursday, Oct. 4, residents will be able to tour Covanta’s Wallingford trash-to-energy facility and afterward ask questions of representatives from the company and the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.

The idea for the event was sparked by a petition filed by resident Robert Gross to contest the DEEP’s approval of Covanta’s application to renew its solid waste permit. Gross cited resident concerns about smells and emissions violations that have since been addressed. The tour will be held at 4 p.m. at Covanta, 530 S. Cherry St., and the informational session will be held at6:30 p.m. at Town Hall.

The Record-Journal was given a preview tour on Tuesday by the plant’s local and regional operators, who answered questions and gave an overview of operations at the Wallingford plant.

The Cherry Street facility began operating in 1989 under the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority. New Jersey based Covanta bought it in 2010. Today the facility, equipped with three furnaces, burns 420 tons of trash each day from Wallingford, Meriden, Cheshire, North Haven and Hamden. The process generates 11 megawatts of energy, which is sold to the Connecticut Light & Power Co. That’s roughly enough to power 9,000 houses, according to Covanta literature.

Officials Tuesday stressed the environmental benefits of a trash-to-energy plant over depositing trash in landfills, and presented their continued efforts to support recycling.

“We’ve been doing green energy before people thought it was sexy,” said Cheryl Thibeault, business manager at the Wallingford site.

The site, staff say, produces energy equivalent to 100 tons of coal or 420 barrels of oil each day, reducing the need for either substance. Ninety percent of the trash it takes in becomes energy. The other 10 percent is ash, which is deposited in landfills. James Regan, communications manager for Covanta, said the company’s operations in some other countries use the ash in paving and other projects, and he’s hoping the U.S. will soon allow the same practices.

Waste company trucks roll in six days a week, stopping at a scale and then dropping off their loads of garbage in a warehouse-like room called the “tipping floor.” On Tuesday, the room, visible from Covanta’s offices through a pane of glass, was filled with about 2,500 tons of all manner of trash.

There was no scent of trash behind the layer of glass, and that’s because the plant both sprays a deodorizing formula and sucks air from the room into its processes so that it is burned with the trash.

Gross has said some residents have said they can smell trash emanating from the facility. Though the plant takes measures, Thibeault acknowledges that on a hot summer day, someone might smell a truck pulling in with contents that have been marinating.

Though it’s only open for deliveries six days a week, the plant processes waste 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. From the tipping floor, the trash is pushed into one of three graded furnaces, with higher temperatures the farther down each one sits; the temperature hits as high as 2,000 degrees.

The ash is collected below, and the hot air generated heats a boiler that sends steam that powers a generator that generates electricity that is transmitted to CL&P through an on-site transformer.

Air and particulates that are byproducts of the process are routed through other mechanisms that filter out unwanted substances before the final emissions are released as air and steam from a stack on the site.

A broken pipe in furnace 2 that was supposed to shoot a substance that leaches dioxins from the escaping emissions is what caused the plant’s 2010 DEEP violations. The company reported the problem after a compliance test showed the issue, and Covanta was fined $400,000.

The furnace was taken immediately offline and remedied, and emissions were not high enough to have had any effect on the health of nearby residents, Regan said.

“What happened in 2010 was unacceptable to us as a company,” Regan said. He said the company worked hard to ensure that the plant is now well under the amount allowed. It is also a site for new technology that is further decreasing dioxin emissions.

Business at the plant will increase in the next year, with the company adding trash from Newington, Madison, Guilford and Southbury.

Covanta staff say they’re looking forward to answering questions and concerns next week.

“‘Not in my backyard’ is real,” Regan said, and he and other staff hope they can help change negative perceptions of the plant.

Those interested in the tour before the hearing should call Thibeault at (203) 294-1649, ext. 3029, well in advance.

WALLINGFORD - Meeting to answer trash plant questions

As published in the Record Journal Saturday September 15, 2012

By Laurie Rich Salerno
Record-Journal staff
lsalerno@record-journal.com
(203) 317-2235
Twitter:@LaurieSalernoRJ 

WALLINGFORD – The state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and the owners of the town’s trash-to-energy plant will hold an informational public meeting in October, triggered by a petition from residents with concerns about the plant.

Representatives of Covanta, the New Jersey-based company that runs the Wallingford plant at 530 S. Cherry St., and the DEEP will be at Town Hall on Oct. 4 at 7 p.m. to answer questions about the facility.

Every day, the plant burns 420 tons of trash from Wallingford, Meriden, Cheshire, North Haven and Hamden, according to Covanta. The process produces 11 megawatts of energy daily, which Connecticut Light and Power purchases. Covanta has applied to the department to renew its Solid Waste permit. After an initial and then more in-depth technical review, the DEEP tentatively approved the permit, with a 30-day period for public comment.

Resident Robert Gross, a longtime critic of the plant, submitted a 25-name petition to the DEEP during the period, which forced a hearing. Gross said he and other residents are concerned about the facility’s previous Environmental Protection Agency violations and the odors he says sometimes emanate from the facility.

“You can go down there on a good day and get some real strong whiffs of trash and burning - especially in the summer months when the air is heavier,” Gross said.

After submitting the petition, he and two other residents met with representatives from DEEP and Covanta to discuss some of the issues that led them to object to the permitting. Some issues were resolved, according to Gross and the DEEP, but it was decided to hold a public information session so all residents can ask questions of both the authority and the business.

The information session is preferable to a public hearing, Gross said. In a public hearing, the public merely voices concerns about the direct issues that are logged for the DEEP’s consideration. But in an information session, the company and DEEP can answer questions raised at the meeting, or get back later to inquiring parties. In this format, the public also doesn’t have to stick to questions related solely to solid waste permitting; they can talk about air emissions, which is covered in a separate air quality permit that will come up for renewal next year, according to a DEEP spokesman.

“My hope is that it’s very productive dialogue and that we satisfy the questions and the concerns that the residents have,” said Gabrielle Frigon, permitting supervisor at the DEEP. Frigon has been working with both Gross and Covanta on the process.

Covanta representatives said they, too, were looking forward to the October session.

“We’re always open to letting the public know what we do at the plant and help them understand what we do with the plant,” said James Regan, Covanta’s manager of corporate communications. Regan said the meeting “should provide plenty of information and address concerns if there are concerns.”

Gross said he believes some of the conversation will involve the plant’s previous emissions violations.

The state attorney general’s office sued Covanta in 2010 and won the case after the plant had two emissions violations in two years. The company was forced to pay $400,000, split between the state treasurer and DEEP.

Testing showed that one of the plant’s emissions stacks was letting out more than twice the dioxins than are allowed. The unit was shut down and upgraded to fix the problem, according to Regan, and is now running below the legal limit.

“Tests have come back since we’ve restarted the unit, and it’s been well within compliance,”Regan said. Frigon said the petitioners could still force a public hearing if they are unsatisfied by the outcome of the informational session. “We want to make sure that the public absolutely maintains their right to be heard,” Frigon said.

FROM WALLINGFORD - One guess

As published in the Record Journal, Sunday July 24, 2011

This week’s FROM WALLINGFORD was written by Stephen Knight.

Covanta, the operator of the Wallingford trash-to-energy plant, is handing over $400,000 to the State of Connecticut as a result of its plant having emitted levels of dioxins at twice the permitted level, according to an article in the July 16th Record-Journal. $400,000 that the company could have and should have used to prevent the problem in the first place now goes to Hartford. Half will go right to the general fund and the other half direct to DEEP for them to use in a “project to enhance environmental protection or conserve natural resources.” Read: to sustain the bureaucracy.

But the story does not end here, and this is where the residents of Wallingford should take note. In an almost “oh, by the way” manner, the article tips us off to the most onerous provision of this settlement: “The settlement also stipulates that the entire plant be shut down the next time an emissions violation is found.”

Here we wander into “the law of unintended consequences” territory, where big government and preening politicians so, so often find themselves – and we dragged right along with them. No doubt DEEP Commissioner Daniel C. Esty thinks of himself as one tough hombre for nailing this big, evil business (those previous two words are synonyms at the DEEP) and forcing them to sign a document pledging to commit corporate hari kari should their people make another error operating the plant. That’ll show ’em! But now think about the real consequences here. Covanta somehow screws up and another release occurs. In rides sheriff Esty and his posse of pasty-faced bureaucrats and they actually shut down this plant. Now what? We’re not talking about a package store caught selling beer to teenagers here. Shut that down and only the owners suffer the consequences. Shut this plant down and now five towns have to find a way to dispose of the trash generated by over two hundred thousand people.

This plant was built and operated for the purpose of incinerating thousands of tons of trash every month. It was placed here because Wallingford is centrally located and therefore all this stuff can be transported most cost-effectively. Pull the plug on this plant and all this material must be trucked elsewhere at much greater cost. And who do you suppose ultimately pays for that? One guess.

And this assumes that there is a place nearby for all this material, which there is not. So now it gets trucked out of state. Now we’ve defeated the whole point of having the plant in the first place – to reduce the volume of the trash in order to reduce the amount of transportation required to get rid of it all. And those trucks all emit what? One guess.

Here’s another consequence: The Town of Wallingford receives over $1 million per year for hosting the facility. Okay, the plant gets shut down. No plant? No payment. And who do you suppose ultimately pays for that loss? One guess.

My point is this: we expect significant consequences for those that do not comply with these regulations. But take-no-prisoners decisions like this tell us that the mission of protecting the environment has been supplanted. Because the State of Connecticut is populated with people who have a visceral, deep-seated hostility toward business and industry, sticking it to business and forcing them to their knees to bow low to the state has become the endgame. And while the agencies and the commissions and the lawyers and the bureaucrats all make their pronouncements and hold their press conferences and announce their “settlements,” all of us in towns like Wallingford are left with the fallout.

By shutting down this plant, Commissioner Esty will have another “Gotcha” trophy to show his fellow environmentalists. But the rest of us here in Wallingford will be left scrambling to deal with the resultant chaos that ensues.

Citizen Mike Show -- Episode 1 – NOW ONLINE

Episode 1 - Citizen Mike Show. A local, public access production covering National, State and local issues. Local topics discussed in the episode include the recap of the September 14th Town Council review of the dioxin release from the Covnata Energy Plant in Wallingford.

There were some additional topics related to the statewide elections here in Connecticut as well as some races around the country. The repeal of "Don't Ask, don't tell" was also commented on.

Special Guests for this episode include Democrat candidate Denise Merrill and Republican Candidate Jerry Ferrell who are both running for Secretary of State in Connecticut . The visits were separately recorded so this was not a debate between the two but individual discussions on the issues as they saw them and their own platforms of how they are looking to address things and carry out their responsibilities to the office if elected.

See Episode 1 - Citizen Mike Show online

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