Gaining momentum, Florida is burning more waste, Locals claim it’s making them ill

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Tampa is discovering, like many other rapidly growing metropolises, that more people also mean more trash. Officials there are responding by embracing a strategy that is well-liked in Florida: set it on fire.

Jack Mariano, the commissioner of Pasco County, which is located directly north of Hillsborough County in Tampa, stated that “any areas that are experiencing growth are going to find issues of capacity” for managing trash. “Everyone’s facing the same problem: where to put the trash?”

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Authorities in Pasco approved a $540 million plan in September to add a fourth boiler to the county’s waste-to-energy facility, or WTE. This would increase the incinerator complex’s capacity by approximately 50% and increase the amount of power that is fed into the electrical grid from a turbine that is spun by steam heated by burning garbage.

The project is expected to be completed in the summer of 2026, and Mariano stated that the authorities intend to use monies from the Inflation Reduction Act to offset roughly $60 million of that amount. The plant, one of three in the Tampa region that treats solid waste, can currently process a third of the volume of waste from Pinellas County to the west and less than two-thirds that of a nearby Hillsborough WTE, according to a facility official.

Although WTEs have been in use for many years, research by the US Environmental Protection Agency indicate that their technology is becoming safer and cleaner. Over the years, regulators have needed significant renovations, particularly to the 1989-built Pasco facility. A representative for the Energy Department stated that many of the installations qualify for tax credits that were increased by the Inflation Reduction Act.

The director of solid waste and resource recovery for Pasco County, Justin Roessler, stated that the incinerator there already had “rigorous air pollution controls” in place, such as the injection of activated carbon to filter dangerous gasses. Continuous monitoring of the site’s emissions is done to look for anomalies, which are then reported to regulators.

A local official stated that part of the expansion plan is adding new technology to the boilers to lower nitrogen oxide emissions. After all is said and done, Roessler stated, Pasco will be able to claim the distinction of being “the first waste-to-energy operation in the country to have a CO2 limit in its permit.” “We’re quite happy about it.”

Even the cleanest operations release federally permissible quantities of harmful compounds created during combustion, and waste-to-energy plants nevertheless handle extremely dangerous materials. More attention has recently been focused on locals’ worries about the possible health hazards.

Last year, Ana Vale moved her family from Atlanta to a house in Doral, Florida, which is located just 20 doors away from the incinerator for Miami-Dade County. Her now 14-year-old daughter started complaining of her skin burning and itching around two weeks after they moved in. She was given an eczema diagnosis by a dermatologist shortly after.

The factory then caught fire and burned down on February 12, which added to Vale’s worries.

Despite newer studies connecting air pollution and other environmental pollutants to an increase in eczema cases, Vale said her daughter’s physician made no inferences regarding the incinerator’s influence. However, she thinks it plays a part.

She stated, “We lived in Atlanta for 12 years, but she never got that diagnosis—ever,” but she conceded that her access to doctors is limited. We are a family of four. It gets insane if we take them to the doctor every time they get sick.

Although some have, Vale has no intention of suing any government agencies or Covanta, the business that owns and operates seven of Florida’s ten WTEs, including Pasco’s.

Due to the Miami-Dade fire, a number of residents sued Covanta in March, claiming it had put them in danger of illness or had already caused them to become ill. In response to a complaint made by Earthjustice, a nonprofit that advocates for environmental causes, the EPA opened a civil rights investigation in June to determine if state environmental regulators intentionally caused harm to the health of Black and Latino populations.

According to the Earthjustice case, officials allegedly suppressed safety information on the emissions from waste incinerators in Florida from people with disabilities or limited English proficiency, and those groups are disproportionately more likely to reside close to the facilities.

An EPA spokesman stated that the organization could not comment on ongoing investigations, even though it is not closely examining Covanta in this case. The Department of Environmental Protection in Florida chose not to respond.

According to Newsday, state environmental officials in New York are looking into claims that Covanta’s incinerator in Hempstead, Long Island, disposed of hazardous ash for years in a landfill close to a community that is primarily Black, with some residents alleging health effects. This month, a family filed a wrongful death case against the nearby school system, claiming that the plant was a factor in their son’s diagnosis of lymphoma when he started middle school there. That was a year ago.

The lawsuit does not name Covanta, and the firm has refuted any misconduct over its ash disposal methods, claiming that they were supervised by authorities and that there is no proof that has surfaced connecting its activities to any health risks.

Covanta area asset manager Patrick Walsh, who is in charge of the WTEs in Pasco, Hillsborough, and Lake counties in Florida, stated that it is simple to “point the finger at us” because the company’s incinerators frequently have “the tallest stack on that skyline in a very heavily industrial area.” Walsh further stated that further investigation is required to evaluate the health claims.

According to Joe Kilsheimer, executive director of the Florida WTE Coalition, which is made up of Covanta and a number of South Florida government agencies, “you have to compare waste-to-energy to the alternative.”

With the highest population increase in the nation last year, the state—which prides itself on being able to burn more municipal solid trash than any other—saw a massive influx of migrants to the Tampa area. Due to the high population along the coast, landfill space is expensive and scarce, as these sites release methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.

As the American economy weakens and people buy fewer things and throw away less of them, waste volumes should normally decline, but Roessler said that “we have not seen that in Florida.”

Trash collectors collected roughly 51 million tons of trash in the state of California in 2022, compared to 47 million tons in 2020 – an increase equivalent to nearly 90,000 completely filled semitrailers.

After serving as the head of the county’s sanitation department for 15 years, the chief retired five months after the Miami-Dade WTE fire. He left behind a warning to find a place to store all of the rubbish or to stop building work in the region to prevent waste from piling up.

A shortage is also present in Pasco County, where residential growth is exceeding that of Hillsborough and Pinellas counties. According to Roessler, their WTE is already predicted to burn 440,000 tons of waste this year—nearly 100,000 more than typical. Additionally, household annual garbage disposal rates have increased to $100 from $93 last year due to the county’s population growth of 8% in the last two years and a 15% increase in solid waste volumes in the last four.

According to Kilsheimer, at least six new WTE constructions or expansions are “actively considered” around South Florida. One such location is Broward County, which is home to Ft. Lauderdale and the state’s most ethnically diverse population. There, municipal solid waste volumes increased by about 13% between 2021 and the previous year.

A representative for Covanta would only declare that “there’s a significant amount of curiosity in WTE in other markets in Florida that we are currently in,” without confirming the company’s plans to construct or run more facilities in the state. However, opposition is starting to seep in. People who live in Pembroke Pines, Broward, packed a town hall meeting in August to voice their opposition to the idea of building an incinerator there.

Supporters of the plants emphasize how the energy they produce powers nearby communities. According to the Pasco facility, it generates roughly 30 megawatts of electricity every day, enough to power 17,000 households. It is anticipated that the expansion will increase that output by almost 50%.

Different approaches to rubbish management may be encouraged by state laws. Although Florida governments “are very entrenched in burning waste,” Earthjustice attorney Dominique Burkhardt pointed out options that can reduce the amount of waste that ends up in landfills or WTEs.

She indicated a $4 million grant from the EPA that was being used to build a solar-powered composting factory in Baltimore that would be able to handle 12,000 tons of organic waste annually. It follows a 2021 state law mandating that major food waste producers who are close to composting facilities separate their garbage.

On the other hand, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year passed a bill that will provide funding to municipalities so they can construct new incinerators. Legislators have rejected recent attempts to codify recycling laws.

Local officials, however, continue to brag about the decades-long operating contracts that followed and Florida’s Solid Waste Management Act of 1988, which sparked towns’ acceptance of WTEs.

It was in that year that Covanta and Pasco County signed a service agreement. As per the most recent extensions, it is scheduled to persist until 2034.

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