Solid Waste Action Team,   http://www.lexingtonma.org/swat/HomePage.htm

1. TOP RECYCLERS(John Andrews)

Below is the list of the recycling rates for the town in Massachusetts with the highest rates of recycling (over 40%). This list is from the 1998 Municipal Recycling Report Card released by the Executive Office of Environmental Affairs. The complete list is on the Internet at http://www.magnet.state.ma.us/envir/98rpcrd.htm. Lexington is number 22 in the state - a very respectable showing.

- TOWN - - RATE -

BUCKLAND 73%

WAYLAND 71%

BELCHERTOWN 67%

SOUTHAMPTON 66%

LEVERETT 63%

WHATELY 63%

STURBRIDGE 61%

PEPPERELL 60%

ASHBURNHAM 59%

SOUTHBRIDGE 59%

BERNARDSTON 58%

LONGMEADOW 58%

WILLIAMSTOWN 58%

COLRAIN 57%

HATFIELD 57%

MONTAGUE 57%

GILL 56%

ORANGE 56%

CHARLEMONT 54%

ERVING 54%

GRANVILLE 54%

LEXINGTON 54%

ROCKPORT 54%

WORCESTER 54%

BRIMFIELD 53%

NORFOLK 53%

WASHINGTON 53%

HADLEY 52%

NORWELL 52%

WESTFORD 52%

CONCORD 51%

HARWICH 51%

MATTAPOISETT 51%

DUDLEY 50%

GOSHEN 50%

DENNIS 49%

SOMERSET 49%

SOUTHWICK 49%

WENDELL 49%

BOXFORD 47%

HARVARD 47%

MILTON 47%

SWAMPSCOTT 47%

BECKET 46%

BELLINGHAM 46%

HALIFAX 46%

LENOX 46%

PLAINFIELD 46%

SUNDERLAND 46%

ALFORD 45%

BERLIN 45%

DUNSTABLE 45%

DUXBURY 45%

LAKEVILLE 45%

MEDWAY 45%

NORTHAMPTON 45%

READING 45%

SUDBURY 45%

WESTPORT 45%

AMHERST 44%

MONTEREY 44%

NEWTON 44%

ROYALSTON 44%

SEEKONK 44%

DALTON 43%

FALMOUTH 43%

HOLLISTON 43%

TAUNTON 43%

WEBSTER 43%

WESTFIELD 43%

NEW MARLBOROUGH 42%

WELLESLEY 42%

EASTHAMPTON 41%

LANCASTER 41%

NORTH ANDOVER 41%

WILBRAHAM 41%

WINDSOR 41%

CONWAY 40%

N. BROOKFIELD 40%

[The following article appeared in Waste Age. on July 10, 1997. While over a year old, it still contains relevant background information.]

Negotiations Under Way To Ease Immense Financial Burden of 400,000-TPY Incinerator ,By Sarah Halsted

The RESCO incinerator in North Andover, Mass., has 23 towns eager to find a way out of their expensive waste-production quota contract with Wheelabrator Technologies, Inc. (Hampton, N.H.). The contract, once a lucrative proposition to state decision-makers concerned about landfill shortages in the 1980s, has instead become an extremely costly burden for the towns under contract.

Wheelabrator, which owns and operates the RESCO incinerator, is receptive to the widespread public concern and currently is renegotiating the contract with Environmental Futures, Inc. (Boston), a consulting firm hired by the towns to help ease the financial burden of the contract. Wheelabrator agreed to renegotiate the contract because the "community requested it," says Jim McIver, plant manager for the incinerator.

Jim Dougherty, a Wheelabrator regional representative, confirms that the renegotiations are essentially complete, and that, at this time, officials are "basically mopping up" the details, which, he adds, will not be revealed until July 1.

The incinerator, which burns about 400,000 tpy of waste, is the single worst mercury polluter in the state, according to the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protec-tion (DEP). It also produces about 100,000 tpy of ash that must be landfilled, according to Eric Weltman, of the Toxics Action Center (Boston), a nonprofit organization that has been working closely with citizens concerned about the RESCO incinerator.

A recent DEP report "issued us as the number one mercury emitter," McIver says. Wheelabrator provided the information to substantiate that claim, he adds. "The only problem with the report is that we are the only power generator that provides that type of information," McIver says. "No one does more emissions testing than us---I doubt very much that utilities or private power producers can provide as much information as we do." Wheelabrator tests its North Andover RESCO stacks every nine months.

The incinerator currently is responsible for 20% of all state mercury emissions, local reports say. But that figure has come down significantly from earlier data which put mercury levels emitted from the incinerator at 50%, says Robert Halpin, North Andover town manager, one of the towns unhappily tied into the contract.

But "there still is a lot of work to be done," Halpin says. "I think [the incinerator] is questionable technology and ought to be reassessed."

The current Wheelabrator contract stipulates that the 23 towns, collectively called the Northeast Solid Waste Committee (NESWC), must pay a set fee of $95 for every ton they incinerate at the RESCO incinerator, far more than the market price of between $42 and $45 per ton that NESWC charges private haulers. NESWC must make up the difference.

In addition to this cost, the incinerator has left NESWC with a $200-million debt to cover construction costs. NESWC has not even begun to scratch the surface of that debt.

One final punch is that in order to comply with the 1990 Clean Air Act, the towns also must purchase scrubbers for the incinerator, at a cost that could reach up to $55 million, says Steven Rothstein, a consultant and head of Environmental Futures.

"We are desperately seeking some way out of this contract," North Andover's Halpin says. "Despite numerous legal reviews, we find it is an impossible contract to break."

Recycling rates impact Recycling rates have been directly hurt by the need to feed the ever-hungry belly of the production-quota incinerator contract.

"There is no incentive for the community to recycle, and [the] state mandates some level of recycling," which is "greatly penalizing" the area in terms of finances, Halpin says.

Simply put, "the contract is a disincentive to recycle," Rothstein says. "The cost for the community to recycle is dramatically affected by the cost of having to pay to use the facility in North Andover," agrees Matt Zettek, recycling coordinator for NESWC.

Some towns even are considering cutting back on recycling altogether, to help offset the costs of the incinerator, Weltman says. "Clearly, the towns with the highest recycling rates are being penalized for having to pay the GAT [guaranteed annual tonnage]--these towns have had to act as brokers, they're subsidizing the costs" of the ncinerator, he adds.

However, the towns are not completely without assistance. In addition to Rothstein's active lobbying efforts and Wheelabrator renegotiations, the Massachusetts DEP has implemented a grant program to help municipalities relieve the financial burdens imposed by the incinerator.

"We pay them a flat rate per ton for every ton of recycled material they divert. In turn, they have to meet an increasing [amount] of program criteria--the first year they had to pass a mandatory recycling ordinance--the criteria has increased in subsequent years," Brooke Nash of DEP says.

The towns have been making their own progress in terms of recycling, even without this grant, according to Nash. Because of their efforts, she says, she does not believe that the incinerator is hurting recycling rates.

Not so, Zettek says. "The state has been providing some incentive to help [the towns]--it helps offset some costs for communities to recycle--but overall, solid waste costs are so much higher than the rest of the community. However, we greatly appreciate the state's help."

Overall, NESWC has a combined recycling rate of 28%, lower than the state average of 32%. But averages vary greatly within the towns, Rothstein emphasizes.

Since the implementation of the state grant program three years ago, the amount of materials diverted has increased 16% from fiscal year 1994 to fiscal year 1996, according to Nash.

Locked in Breaking the contract would be extremely expensive, if not altogether impossible.

"We have all pledged our full faith and credit against the bonds," Halpin says. "Breaking the contract is viewed as the most expensive option available to us. We have to pay off all our debt, pay off our guarantee, and still take our waste somewhere else."

Nash is more blunt. "There is no way out of this contract," she says.

Rothstein agrees. "We have looked at a variety of alternatives and don't believe there is a legal way to [break the contract]."

Rothstein's firm is seeking further state and federal assistance to offset part of the costs of the clean air retrofit. In addition, the firm has, over the past three years, initiated a number of programs intended to increase NESWC recycling rates.

One such program is to build the state's first permanent household hazardous waste facility, to divert material from the RESCO incinerator.

"The communities are trying to do the right thing in terms of recycling," Zettek says. "But the longstanding agreements hurt their ability to do the right thing. It's frustrating."

"These are all reasonably progressive, educated towns that should be doing aggressive recycling, but they are being held back by the contract," Weltman adds.

[Environmentalists recently succeeded in convincing DEP to tighten controls on air emissions of mercury, despite heavy lobbying against the idea by incinerator operators. The following story is the report in the Boston Globe. Following this is a copy of a letter sent by the SWAT to the Lexington Board of Selectmen regarding NESWC lobbying activities.]

New rules seek to slash mercury emissions in state

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By Peter J. Howe, Globe Staff, 07/29/98

Massachusetts environmental officials are stepping up their crackdown on six trash incinerators whose smokestack mercury emissions have contributed to fishing bans in more than 50 lakes, ponds, and rivers around the state. New regulations announced yesterday include an apparent first-of-its-kind provision that will restrict not just daily pollution but the cumulative emissions of dioxin, mercury, cadmium, lead, and acid-rain gases that build up

in soil and water.

"If you look at the other 49 states, they're nowhere close to addressing this issue the way we are," said David B. Struhs, the state environmental protection commissioner. Overall, by 2000 or soon after, Struhs said, the new rules should cut emissions by 85 percent from 1995 levels and encourage bigger, better-publicized programs to recycle mercury-containing products such as batteries, thermostats, and fluorescent light bulbs. The rules cover plants in Fall River, Haverhill, Millbury, North Andover, Rochester, and Saugus and will take effect next month.

However, their effect will be limited: Nearly 60 percent of mercury landing on Massachusetts blows in from other states, principally from Midwestern power plants that burn huge quantities of coal containing trace amounts of mercury. The six Bay State incinerators generate about 20 percent of the state's mercury pollution. The rest comes from local medical waste incinerators, whose regulations will be toughened this fall, and from coal- and oil-burning local power plants.

"We're very glad they went as far as the technology allows, but we don't feel that these regulations overall will protect public health,'' said Lee Ketelsen of Clean Water Action, who critiqued early proposals. "We still feel that these incinerators will pose a threat to people."

State Environmental Affairs Secretary Trudy Coxe was especially enthusiastic about part of the regulations allowing the DEP to toughen a plant's emission restrictions if it decides its emissions "alone or cumulatively with other" plants violate environmental laws, as environmentalists charge the cluster of Merrimack Valley plants has.

But John Rumpler, an attorney with Roxbury-based Alternatives for Community and Environment, an urban public health advocacy group, said that proviso should have been made tougher and more specific, saying it provides only "a glimmer of hope that the state will move toward ensuring environmental justice."

Efforts to reach incinerator operators familiar with the rules failed yesterday. In June, Ogden Corp. shut down its Lawrence trash-to-energy plant, saying even before the new rules were officially announced it would cost too much to comply with them.

The other plants are expected to spend about $100 million installing new mercury-control devices. Under the new rules, total mercury emissions in air from the incinerators should drop from about 5,200 pounds annually to 900. But just one gram of mercury - 1/70th of a teaspoon - can sufficiently contaminate a 10-acre lake to make its fish unsafe to eat, Struhs aide Andrea Carneiro said.

Across Massachusetts, the Department of Public Health warns pregnant women not to eat freshwater fish because of the likelihood they contain mercury, which can cause birth defects and retardation in children. Fewer than 100 of the state's 4,700 bodies of water have actually be untested for mercury. In February, the health department published 67 local fish-consumption warnings urging children, pregnant and nursing women and in many cases everyone not to eat fish from more than 50 bodies of water, including Walden Pond and long stretches of the Charles, Concord, Merrimack and Sudbury rivers. The new environmental rules require more aggressive efforts by incinerators to intercept mercury-containing trash. Although mercury amounts in batteries have been sharply reduced over the last decade, they still account for 68.4 percent of the mercury emitted from incinerators, with fluorescent light bulbs accounting for another 11.2 percent, according to the DEP. This story ran on page B02 of the Boston Globe on 07/29/98.

Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company.

Letter to Lexington Board of Selectmen

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[The following letter to the Lexington Board of Selectmen resulted from the July meeting of the Solid Waste Action Team. It expresses concern over NESWC use of taxpayer money to lobby with their private partner (Wheelabrator) against state actions to protect the health and environment of the public.]

July 24, 1998

Dear Selectmen,

The Solid Waste Action Team is a committee appointed by the Lexington Board of Selectmen to provide citizen support and input for the Town's solid waste program. At the July 22 meeting of the committee the following issues were discussed and the writing of this letter was authorized.

Background

o The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has proposed changes to Municipal Waste Combustor (MWC) Clean Air Act standards that will better protect public health and the environment in light of new findings regarding the health damages caused by MWC emissions (particularly mercury).

o An intense lobbying campaign is apparently underway involving public and private incinerator interests to pressure the DEP to weaken or abandon the proposals.

o It was recently stated at a North East Solid Waste Committee (NESWC) Board meeting that the NESWC Board will lobby strongly against the tighter standards. NESWC has written a 7-page letter arguing that any DEP action that would require emissions reductions is an "unfunded mandate". . NESWC insists that the state DEP impose no emission standards that go beyond current Federal standards unless the state provides funding required to implement the standards. If this approach is adopted, the DEP would be unable to act to protect public health unless they were able to make substantial payments to the corporations generating the pollution.

o The NESWC lobbying position does not appear to have been carefully reviewed by the NESWC communities. Some of its assertions, such as the argument that taxpayers should be responsible for payments to corporations that are required to reduce pollution, appear to be inconsistent with previous policy and with public opinion within the communities.

o Citizens of NESWC communities will bear the brunt of the additional pollution that will be permitted if the NESWC lobbying is successful and standards are not tightened.

Concerns of the Committee

o The citizens of Lexington rely upon the DEP to protect their health and the environment. The DEP has a mandate to protect the public interest and to evaluate all aspects of issues over which they have authority. Timely response to health/environmental concerns on the part of DEP is an integral part of ensuring that our solid waste policy serves the public interest. Thus we would feel that a policy issue arises when a public/private partnership such as the NESWC/Wheelabrator collaboration, with a narrower perspective, is working at cross-purposes to DEP.

o The NESWC lobbying effort appears to be motivated primarily by consideration of financial impacts upon the public/private partnership. The private partner (Wheelabrator) has its own private interests that it is permitted to lobby for (as long as it does not charge lobbying expenses to NESWC communities).

However, the NESWC communities have the right to ask that public funds not become embroiled in lobbying for a private interest.

o It is not clear that NESWC's financial analysis reflects the true interest of the NESWC communities, even on a strictly financial basis. The validity of NESWC's analysis is called into question by lack of proper consideration of possible significant financial considerations such as health costs, environmental losses, property value impacts, liabilities for pollution damages, etc. These costs are not borne by Wheelabrator and they do not directly effect the tipping fees at the North Andover incinerator. But they should fully considered by an organization that serves the public interest.

o When NESWC works closely with its private partner in attempting to undermine efforts by DEP to protect health and the environment, it raises concerns regarding whether a proper distinction is being made between the interests of the private partner and the interests of the citizens of the NESWC communities. The interests of the private partner may diverge greatly from the public interest, particularly when that partner operates other facilities that are affected by the outcome of the lobbying. Thus, we are uncomfortable with NESWC's participation in any lobbying effort aimed at undermining DEP.

Conclusions

o The SWAT feels it is inappropriate for an organization supported by our tax dollars to join with their private partner in lobbying against a state agency charged with protecting health and the environment.

o The SWAT requests the Board of Selectmen to immediately inform NESWC of the Town's concerns with their lobbying effort. and ask that they cease and desist in this effort.

o The SWAT requests that the Board of Selectmen instruct our representative to NESWC to work with the NESWC board and the other communities to ensure that problems such as this are resolved and do not reoccur in the future.

Good news. The tougher incinerator regs have been upheld. Especially important for closing a major mercury emissions loophole, and for allowing the cumulative impacts of multiple incinerator emissions to be considered in the repermitting process. This leaves the future of Wheelebrator still very much in question. And the mercury standard (without the "percent reduction" loophole) is one the plant operators themselves have said they can not meet. Soooo, the saga continues.

New Incinerator Regulations

John called to say that WE DID IT! It appears that the latest installment in the continuing saga of the new incinerator regs is a happy one for everyone who breathes (and eats) in MA and everywhere downwind. Despite extreme last-minute pressure on DEP last Friday afternoon from municipal officials and others (twenty officials literally stormed DEP offices), the DEP did not cave in!

A lot of the pressure came from the Worcester and southeastern MA areas, because Millbury and SEMass incinerators do not plan to install fabric filters, so there's a question as to whether they can meet the mercury standard. DEP went into the huddle over the weekend to try to create a fallback for these two facilities. But when they came out of the huddle, they DID NOT in essence lower the mercury standards. What they did was to make available to those facilities a three-year waiver which they can apply for. If the operators find that the carbon injection system is not sufficient to meet the mercury standards, they can have an additional two years to put in the fabric filters.

The DEP Regulations are now final. They have been sent to the Secretary of State's office (Monday). Commissioner David Struhs called John R. this afternoon to tell John the news and TO PERSONALLY THANK ACE and MVEC for backing strong standards. He praised our "political savvy."

John says tho it is true that we didn't get everything we had asked for, significant changes were made even very late in the game because of the letter signed by ACE, TAC, CWA and MVEC. That letter, which John drafted and to which Lee and others suggested amendments, evidently gave DEP and EOEA the support they needed. The letter was sent to the Governor, DEP, EOEA, and Office of Administration and Finance.

During meetings with DEP and EOEA, our team of experts (John, Lee, Eric, and Anne Reynolds--have I forgotten anyone?) had pointed out some instances of unclear wording and were reasonably successful in getting wording changes made before the final DEP draft. John went over the final draft of the regs with a "rather fine-tooth comb."

John credits our successful hearing in Haverhill and the testimony (oral and written) of many citizens about the regs, which also had a significant impact on DEP and EOEA decision-making. A BIG THANK YOU goes to John, Lee, Anne R., Eric, James G., all of you who gave testimony, and all the folks who called the Governor's office and drove his aides crazy last week!

[Note: The newspaper article below discusses attempts to wring a taxpayer subsidy out of Ohio residents in order to pay off the debts from a trash incinerator that was uneconomical to operate.]

Trash haulers face new rules

Fees would pay debt on power plant

The Colombus Dispatch, July 28, 1998

By David Lore Dispatch Science Reporter

At a time when deregulation is sweeping away controls on most utilities, re-regulation is on the horizon for central Ohio trash haulers. Three years ago, Columbus' trash-burning power plant was closed in large part because of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that appeared to liberate trash haulers from having to dump their loads at the plant or the Franklin County landfill.

Now, however, the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio is getting ready to propose a return to controls on trash disposal. The strategy -- called flow control -- would be combined with a new fee schedule to pay off the former power plant's $152 million debt.

The waste authority board is to discuss the plan next Tuesday. It amounts to a bailout for the agency, which has fallen behind in its lease payments to the city of Columbus -- the plant owner.

As approved by the Columbus City Council in early June, the debt retirement plan would appear to be a lose-lose situation for the city.

Columbus is writing off 34.5 percent -- or $91 million -- of the original $263 million debt, which includes the principal and associated bond costs as well as future interest, said City Finance Director Wyatt Kingseed.

This, plus the $18 million the authority has paid the city thus far, has reduced the authority's long- term obligation to about $154 million, according to Kingseed.

In addition, the city agreed to pay the authority more than $2 million more in annual fees to dispose of city trash at the county landfill, although that amount will be deducted from the debt rather than paid out.

Kingseed said it's probably the best deal the city can make under the circumstances.

"From my perspective, we're forgiving part of the debt which, under current circumstances, they'd probably never pay anyway,'' Kingseed said.

The problem has been that, under the 1994 U.S. Supreme Court opinion, the Solid Waste Authority decided it could not force waste haulers to use its landfill or pay its disposal fees. The high court held that any local government restrictions on exporting trash to other states was an unconstitutional infringement on interstate commerce.

Since the ruling, many trash haulers have switched from the county landfill to lower-cost private dumps. That has reduced the authority's income, making it unable to make its $18 million annual lease payments to the city -- money the city needed to pay off the power plant's debt.

"Columbus has been meeting the debt obligations, but we were not able to meet our lease obligation,'' explained Michael D. Long, director of the authority. "We've been paying only $4 million a year.''

The lease was renegotiated because the old agreement was no longer realistic, Kingseed said. "More and more, Columbus is becoming their only customer. They're losing their customer base. This year, so far, they've paid us $1.7 million, and that's all they could pay us without this new fee.''

Columbus generates about 300,000 tons of the 1.1 million tons that go into the county landfill every year. The new fee will be $7 on every ton of garbage collected in the waste authority's five-county district, regardless of where it is taken for disposal. The new money -- an estimated $7.7 million a year -- will go to the city to retire the power plant debt.

The fee will be charged in addition to the existing $5-a-ton trash "generating'' fee and the $15 to $17.25-a-ton "tipping'' or county landfill disposal fee, Long said.

Since the authority reduced its tipping fees last spring in an attempt to compete with private landfills, the new charge will only return total fees to the level that was being charged in April, said Long.

There's no guarantee that the new plant- retirement fee will not be passed through to curbside customers, he said. "That's really unknown.''

But customer prices don't usually track changes in landfill charges on the hauler, he said. "When SWACO reduced its prices, the customer did not directly benefit. And the inverse is true; there are times when the price goes up, and the (homeowner) does not see an increase.''

However, Ronald Miller of Canton, Ohio, has no doubt that the new fee will wind up on homeowners' bills. He's president of the Ohio Chapter, National Solid Waste Management Association.

"Most of the haulers don't have a choice,'' Miller said. "You can't absorb that kind of increase without passing it on.''

Despite the 1994 Supreme Court ruling, the new flow control plan is legal because it doesn't levy the fee on out-of-state exports, said Dirk Plessner of Toledo, attorney for the waste authority. Federal courts have upheld this

interpretation, he said, and at least five other county waste authorities in Ohio are requiring payments if trash is hauled elsewhere within the state.

The earlier challenge to trash flow controls came from Mid-American Waste Systems. Mid-American was subsequently taken over by USA Waste Services, which, in a recent settlement of the lawsuit, agreed not to contest the constitutionality of the new plan.

The Solid Waste Management Association remains opposed to flow control restrictions on haulers and considers them unconstitutional, even if limited to intrastate loads, Miller said. "We ought to be free enterprises and go wherever is best for our personal business. "We're totally against it,'' he said. "And I don't think it's a done deal.'

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