Waste incinerators 'a major source'

At left: The Regional Waste Systems incinerator in Portland glows at night under bright floodlights. Every year, the plant discharges 300 pounds of mercury into the air on the outskirts of the city. RWS engineers have examined systems used in Europe that would reduce mercury output at the plant.
Staff photo by David A. Rodgers

Every year, the Regional Waste Systems incinerator spews 300 pounds of mercury into the air on the outskirts of Portland.

Where it comes down, no one knows.

But new information from regional air-quality officials makes one thing clear: If Maine wants to bring its mercury pollution problem under control, the region's taxpayer-financed trash burners will have to clean up their acts - before power plants and manufacturers are forced to do so.

''They are definitely a major source,'' Margaret Round, staff member at Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management, said of trash incinerators. ''It seems pretty likely that (incinerators) will be targeted.''

Round's Boston-based organization represents air-quality regulators in the six New England states, plus New Jersey and New York. In a forthcoming report, the group will list trash incinerators as the source of 45 percent of the mercury released into the air in the Northeast. Other large sources include power plants, boilers and some manufacturers.

Regional Waste Systems, which is owned by 21 member communities in southern Maine, will have to buy mercury controls for its smokestack. Its mercury releases are 55 percent higher than the next-largest incinerator source in Maine.
RWS is moving in the direction of controlling mercury. The plant's engineers have looked at systems used in Europe, where industrial mercury controls are common and have worked effectively.

''The technology that's available reduces mercury by 85 to 90 percent,'' said Charles Foshay, executive director of RWS. ''That's huge.''

Foshay said he doesn't know yet what the controls will cost, but one promising system carries a $1 million price tag. That would add $5.68 a ton to the cost of running the plant, based on its current capacity.

Spread among the 31 towns that send waste to RWS, the mercury controls would add only a few cents to the average homeowner's trash costs.

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates the national cost of fitting mercury controls to trash plants at $56 million. If that happens, there will be a corresponding 85 percent reduction in mercury releases from trash incinerators.

But the collective emissions of the 60 trash plants in the Northeast probably won't be cut by anywhere near that figure.

New EPA rules exempt smaller plants from the stricter limits. The Mid-Maine Waste Action Coalition plant in Auburn, for example, won't need mercury controls under the rules. Yet the Auburn plant puts out 193 pounds of mercury a year, second only to RWS among Maine trash plants.

Maine could set its own, tighter rules to force the Auburn plant to install mercury controls. But James Brooks, head of the Department of Environmental Protection's air quality bureau, said the state won't take that step.

''Lately, every time we go beyond the federal rules, the Legislature tends to bring us back to the minimum,'' Brooks said.

Maine's other trash plants, Maine Energy in Biddeford and Penobscot Energy Recovery Co. in Orrington, actually burn more waste than either RWS or Auburn.

But they have much lower mercury emissions because they were designed to burn trash that has been sorted beforehand. As part of the sorting process, batteries and other products that contain mercury are removed. The plants also use a different pollution control technology, which may be capturing some of the mercury.

The RWS plant was designed and built to burn unsorted waste, because it was seen as a more reliable and proven technology.

Together, Maine's four trash plants put out 530 pounds of mercury a year.

That compares with 6,040 pounds a year from the nine plants in Massachusetts, according to a 1996 study by that state's Department of Environmental Protection. One plant in North Andover, Mass., only 40 miles from the Maine border, accounts for 2,200 pounds of mercury a year.

''That plant,'' said Ellen Doering, of the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, ''is probably responsible for a lot of the mercury in Maine.''

Mercury in the air travels with the wind and eventually comes down with dust, rain or snow, contaminating fish in Maine rivers and lakes.

The Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management group in Boston has no authority to set mercury limits. But its upcoming report and findings will be significant, as they could be used by others who do set pollution rules, such as state governments.

Here is how incinerators contribute to the mercury problem:

The mercury churned out by trash plants originates in the garbage that's brought through the door - mostly in consumer products like batteries, fluorescent lamps and electrical switches.

When these items are burned, mercury goes up the smokestack.

The federal government recently set new mercury limits for trash incinerators. It is now up to individual states to incorporate those limits into their own air pollution laws and regulations.

The DEP doesn't know how much of the mercury that falls into Maine waters originated elsewhere, and how much came from Maine.

But in Massachusetts, regulators estimate that out-of-state sources account for 60 percent of the mercury that settles from the sky there.

Maine officials also don't know where the mercury that drifts from the RWS plant, near the Maine Turnpike off outer Congress Street, ends up.

State biologists have done no sampling of mercury in lakes downwind from the RWS plant, so its local impact is unknown.

Jason Grumet, executive director of the Boston-based air quality group, said the report being developed by the group will help shed light on the unanswered questions about mercury.

He said the group started its study largely because the EPA has failed to deliver information on mercury. A major report on mercury by the EPA has been delayed for two years by political infighting.

''We realized we had to do more work when it became clear the federal study had fallen into a review abyss,'' Grumet said.

Although states can move ahead with rules to regulate trash plant emissions, Grumet said the EPA's failure to send its mercury report to Congress will prolong the mercury problem because states lack the authority to regulate utility emissions.

''We are dealing with a national problem here, and it can never be addressed without a clear . . . federal rule,'' he said.