Turning trash into electricity: leaders of private, public sectors await results.

Turning trash into electricity: Leaders of private, public sectors await results

Private industry, government officials and investors will be watching closely when Southern California's first trash-to-energy plant is fired up this month by Los Angeles County's Sanitation Districts.

Built at a cost of $50 million over the last 20 months, the "state-of-the-art" plant in the City of Commerce is designed to burn about 50 truckloads of solid refuse daily. The heat will produce steam, turning generators to create enough electricity for 20,000 homes, reports Mayor James B. Dimas.

Since Commerce has only 12,000 residents, the power will be sold to Southern California Edison Co., amortizing the $45 million worth of tax-exempt revenue bonds that financed the innovative project.

But an even bigger project, financed by $144 million in revenue bonds, is being built by Dravo Corp. for the county and Long Beach. The Terminal Island plant, scheduled to go into commercial operation in August 1988, will burn twice as much trash, generating a gross of 29 megawatts. A little more than 9 megawatts will be used to operate the plant, and 19.7 megawatts will be sold to SoCalEd. (An average of 1.6 kilowatts is required to serve one residential customer, the company says, and one megawatt is equal to 1,000 kilowatts.)

But these first two plants are just the tip of the iceberg here, according to Robert R. Pease, supervising engineer at the South Coast Air Quality Management District. Under California law before a new plant can be built and then operated here, permits must be obtained from SCAQMD, the designated state regulatory agency.

Long Beach is already considering a second plant, Pease says, and his agency has received a proposal to triple the size of the Commerce plant. Other local trash-to-energy proposals his agency has received are for a total of 237 megawatts, and the city is about to file an application for a 40-megawatt plant is South Central L.A.

Among the county's proposals are 10 megawatts in South Gate, 25 in Spadra (the Pomona area) and two plants totaling 98 megawatts in Puente Hills, Pease says. Two other trash-to-energy plants have been proposed by private companies, he continues: a 49-megawatt plant in Azusa by Azusa Energy and 55 megawatts in Irwindale by Pacific Waste Management.

One reason for investment community interest in the Commerce plant is that California's first trash-to-energy plant in Lassen County never got up and running after the bonds were sold because, among various reasons, there wasn't enough solid waste to fuel the facility. That clearly is not the case here, for L.A. County currently generates 40,000 tons of solid waste a day, says Charles W. Carry, chief engineer and general manager of the county's 25 sanitation districts.

Indeed, the growing amount of trash is another reason for interest in the two new facilities. Most trash here is trucked to landfills, but the closest ones are shutting down, meaning the refuse has to be transported farther and farther out, says Bill Davis, Long Beach's solid waste program manager.

Just how many of the other proposals ever may get off the ground is open to question because of tougher air quality laws and regulations in place now than when the first two projects here got their air quality permits. Since the L.A. Basin fails to meet the federal Environmental Protection Agency's air quality standards, SCAQMD now requires any proposed new plant to get air pollution offsets, Pease says.

An offset is a reduction of air pullution by an existing plant here either by installing air pollution control equipment or shutting down polluting operations.

The smog control agency now requires offsets equal to 120 percent to 165 percent of a new plant's expected air pollution, depending on the distance between the new and the old facilities, Pease explains.

The Commerce facility avoided this requirement by using a particular "innovative technology" for the first time in the United States. The technology injects ammonia into the combustion chamber to convert smong creating nitrogen oxides, products of combustion, to harmless nitrogen and water.

The Long Beach facility was "grandfathered" and claimed a "best efforts" approach had been tried unsuccessfully to get offsets.

State law changed, though, so that an application filed in 1986 must have complete offsets, Pease says. Actually, he concedes, Pacific Waste Management's proposed 55-megawatt plant in Irwindale could squeak through if it gets approval of the California Energy Commission. That agency has final authority on trash-to-energy plants with a capcity exceeding 50 megawatts.

Carry, the county's sanitation chief, emphasizes the trash-to-energy projects are similar to but different from landfill gas-to-energy facilities. With the latter, he says, boilers are heated by burning methane gas created by decomposing organic matter dumped into landfills.

The county long has had several small facilities burning landfill methane to generate electricity, Carry says, mentioning two in Puente Hills and another at Palos Verdes. Now the county is working on a number of bigger plants.

Last month, for example, a 40-megawatt plant at Puente Hills was finished at a total cost of $47 million and will be tested over the next two months. An 11-megawatt plant, expected to cost about $12 million, is under construction now at the Palos Verdes landfill.

In both these, Carry says, the county has no up-front investment but will pay off the projects with a five-year lease payment plan after which the plants will revert to the county.