We are hooked on incineration and it's a dirty, expensive habit.
Not only does Wayne County have two municipal waste incinerators, one of which is the largest in the country, but we also have the state's only medical waste incinerator and an old sewer sludge incinerator. Moreover, the state Department of Environmental Quality recently approved a second sewer sludge incinerator that will be the largest of its kind.
One issue is that pollution permits issued for incinerators are based on something called achievable technology. That means they must use the best methods available to minimize release of toxins -- though none of the methods eliminates harmful emissions. Instead, they only achieve 60 to 90 percent reduction.
As a result, thousands of tons -- yes, tons -- of toxic substances are legally released each year nationwide. And that's if everything is working within the permit limits.
Additionally, toxins that do not go up the stack become concentrated in the ash and filter dust. These end products are classified as hazardous or special waste that must be disposed of in special, costly landfills.
A list of the toxic chemicals released along with the potential health dangers, would take more space than is available here. But to illustrate the point, let's look at the permitted mercury emissions for the Detroit Municipal Incinerator near the intersection of I-75 and I-94.
This single facility releases enough mercury each year to contaminate all of Lake St Clair. This becomes believable when we consider that Lake St. Clair and every other inland lake in Michigan has fish advisory warnings for mercury.
Incinerators also are the biggest source of dioxins, a known carcinogen often called the most toxic substance known.
Inflated costs
Incinerators are expensive to operate, with much of the cost going toward futile efforts to make them safe.
After the Detroit incinerator failed emission tests, for instance, the city was ordered to install more than $200 million in equipment upgrades. And the Central Wayne Incinerator in Dearborn Heights paid more than $100 million to expand ash handling capacity and upgrade the incinerator. After the Medical Waste Incinerator in Hamtramck failed to meet its mercury emissions limit, the owners spent more than $2 million to upgrade the pollution reduction equipment, but still failed the mercury tests.
To pay for the high startup cost and expensive upgrades, communities sending their waste to these incinerators are forced into long-term contracts and financing schemes locking them into paying higher costs than competitive landfill rates.
For example, Wayne, Westland, Garden City, Inkster and Dearborn are all locked into long-term contracts to feed the Central Wayne Incinerator.
These contracts are not without local criticism. Westland voters this month rejected for the second time a tax renewal to pay for the incinerator. In response, Mayor Sandra Cicirelli threatened cuts in services. "The (40-year) contract is binding and the money is going to have to come from somewhere."
The city may put the incinerator tax question back on the ballot for a third time this November.
Councilwoman Cheryl Graunstadt doesn't feel Westland taxpayers should be asked to pay "a debt that never seems to end," as she put it. She added that she "could not support additional public funds for the incinerator without a comprehensive plan to phase out incineration."
Also suffering from bloated incineration costs are Detroit and the communities sending waste to the Detroit incinerator. Some are forced to pay upwards of $130 per ton, while Toronto trucks its trash to Wayne County landfills for as little as $11 a ton.
The same is true with sewer sludge. As plans move forward to build another sewer sludge processing incinerator in the already polluted southwest Detroit Delray neighborhood, Canadian sludge is being trucked to special Michigan landfills.
Did you know that most of the recent water rate increases were to upgrade the sludge incinerator?
Fairness issue
Another concern is that incinerators often are in poor or minority neighborhoods. These older industrialized neighborhoods are already overwhelmed with air pollution from a number of sources and their residents suffer from elevated levels of respiratory problems, including asthma and lung diseases. Higher rates of birth defects, low birth weights and increased cancer risk also are seen.
The movement to erase such inequities is called environmental justice and is an issue of human and civil rights.
Everybody has the right to breathe clean, healthy air and cities should not be tied to long-term, bloated contracts that take valuable resources from our limited city budgets while poisoning our communities. Families should not have to trade good health for affordable housing.
If we are serious about the revitalization of our urban neighborhoods, we have to address the issues of air pollution and environmental justice. We need to understand that our reliance on incineration is bad for our health, bad for our budgets and bad for our neighborhoods. Communities need to take a stand against incineration by finding ways to break the habit.
Rob Cedar is a first-term member of the Hamtramck City Council and Director of HEAT, the Hamtramck Environmental Action Team. He can be reached at (313) 365-4722 or robc313@aol.com.
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