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About Appeal tribune. (Silverton, Or.) 1999-current | View Entire Issue (July 7, 2021)
K1 SILVERTONAPPEAL.COM | WEDNESDAY, JULY 7, 2021 | 3A Covanta will no longer tell county what it’s burning Tracy Loew Salem Statesman Journal USA TODAY NETWORK A decades-long partnership between Marion County and Covanta, which op- erates the garbage incinerator in Brooks, has come to an end. County commissioners approved a new contract with the company that makes the incinerator an independent business. It sets the terms for the new business to take the county’s residential and business waste for up to 13 years. As part of the contract changes, Co- vanta will no longer send Marion Coun- ty detailed monthly invoices, averaging 300 pages each, that show exactly what the burner took and from where, said Brian May, the county’s environmental services division director. A Statesman Journal story published June 27, based on those invoices, showed Covanta is taking industrial waste such as paint, oil and plastics from all over the western U.S. and Cana- da. The Statesman Journal obtained the invoices through a public records re- quest. The Covanta Marion facility in Brooks. DAVID DAVIS AND KELLY JORDAN / STATESMAN JOURNAL County commissioner Kevin Camer- on said the new contract is a better deal for the county. “When I first got here, I remember reading the contract we had, and I went ‘Who negotiated this deal?’ It was like a win-lose contract, for us,” he said. “This one is a very good contract.” It’s unclear how the changes will im- pact the county’s bottom line, or how they will impact residents’ garbage rates. Specific information about fi- nances was not discussed at the meet- ing or included in meeting materials. Under the previous contract, ap- proved in 2014, Marion County paid most of the expenses of running the burner. Those expenses included prop- erty taxes, insurance, environmental permitting and testing, natural gas, phone lines, supplies and disposing of the ash left over from burning waste. The county also received most of the revenue from selling electricity generat- ed from burning garbage, and shared in the revenue from burning out-of-coun- ty medical and industrial waste, and from recycling the metals found in gar- bage. “The county really has participated deeply in the financial life of that facil- ity,” said Brian Nicholas, the county’s public works director. Under the new contract, Covanta will take over the operating costs. The com- pany will keep all of the revenue from selling electricity and recycling metals. It will pay the county a small fee of $5 per ton for accepting out-of-county medical and industrial waste. The contract requires the county to pay Covanta $4.7 million per year to take up to 125,000 tons of garbage per year. That’s less than the 145,000 to 160,000 tons the county had been tak- ing to the burner each year, meaning the company will have more capacity to take waste from outside the county. That includes an expansion and up- grade of the Marion Resource Recycling Facility, which processes construction and demolition debris. The new contract is effective from July 1, 2021 through June 30, 2024. It has an option for two five-year exten- sions, which would take it through June 30, 2034. Burns Continued from Page 2A quire enough testing to ensure neigh- boring communities, including Brooks, Keizer and northeast Salem, are protect- ed from its air emissions. “As a person of color living in the Northeast section of Salem, I have to contend daily with the terrible air qual- ity that results from this garbage burn- er,” Pamela Vasquez told a legislative committee last year. “I would like to know exactly the quantity of these toxic chemicals I am ingesting every day of the year from this old garbage burner.” The Oregon Department of Environ- mental Quality requires regular tests of the emissions coming from the facility’s smokestack. Testing frequency varies, depending on the pollutant. Dioxins, for example are measured once a year. But critics have called for more con- tinuous and frequent monitoring. They say, because the composition of waste shipments varies, tests might not reflect actual emissions. In letters to the company and state regulators, health and environmental groups have raised concerns about pos- sible increased emissions of dioxins and other dangerous toxins from burning plastics in medical waste. “Covanta Marion is the number one single source of particulate matter, ni- trous oxides, sulfur oxides, and dioxins in Marion County, all of which are ex- tremely harmful to human health de- spite the facility’s conformity to overly loose state and federal standards,” Da- mon Motz-Storey, of Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility, wrote to state lawmakers last year. “There is no safe level of exposure for many of these contaminants, which im- pact farmworkers, day laborers, school children, and all those who live, work, and play in Marion County,” he wrote. Covanta officials note that the facil- ity’s emissions are less than what its state permit allows it to emit. However, On June 3, DEQ notified the company that it planned to take en- forcement action because the company operated its emergency engine in non- emergency situations more than is al- lowed by its air quality permit, DEQ spokesman Dylan Darling said. Emergency engines are used during involuntary power losses, Darling said. The permit allows them to be used for up to 50 hours per year for maintenance and testing, in addition to power losses. Oil, paint, plastic The Statesman Journal requested detailed invoices that show supplemen- tal waste shipments sent to the Covanta facility. It received summary information covering October 2018 through Septem- ber 2019, the most recent available at the time of the request, and detailed infor- mation showing the types of waste in- cinerated for five of those months. The documents show that, during that year, Covanta accepted about 6,000 tons of industrial waste from businesses and organizations based in 19 Oregon counties; in California, Wash- ington, Nevada, Utah and Georgia; and in Ontario and British Columbia, Cana- da. Types of industrial waste included: h Oily debris and oily solids. h Paint and rubber waste, paint-con- taminated debris and latex paint poly drums. h Toner waste, waste ribbon and scrap base film. h HVAC filters, polyurethane foam packaging and peanuts, and packaging waste. h RCRA empty containers. The Re- source Conservation and Recovery Act, or RCRA, is the federal law governing the management of hazardous waste. The control room inside of Covanta Marion in December 2019. FILE / STATESMAN JOURNAL h Pharmaceutical waste. The docu- ments are not more specific. h Industrial, manufacturing, produc- tion and plant trash, debris and waste. h Consumer packaged food, health and beauty products, and raw ingredi- ents. h Outdated government products. The documents are not more specific. h Corn and soybean seed, food trash, and vegetative waste. h Confidential material. The docu- ments are not more specific. h Class A Protocol. That’s non-haz- ardous consumer items in original pack- aging, such as food and pharmaceuti- cals and might include recalled prod- ucts. h International Waste. That’s the gal- ley trash from cruise ships and flights. The waste came from 49 companies, including American Petroleum, Boeing, Epson, Genentech, Hewlett-Packard, Xerox, Syngenta Seeds, Sonoco Recy- cling, West Coast Marine, Nordstrom and Pacific Foods of Oregon. It also came from 20 state and federal agencies, including the FBI, U.S. Cus- toms, the Port of Portland and the Ore- gon State Lottery. And dozens of law enforcement agencies throughout Oregon and South- west Washington use the facility to de- stroy weapons, drugs, documents and evidence no longer needed by the courts, the documents show. Covanta charges law enforcement agencies a reduced fee for evidence de- struction and provides prescription drug destruction for free, Jason Myers, of the Oregon State Sheriff ’s Associa- tion, told a legislative committee last year. Law enforcement agencies collect the drugs during community safe dis- posal events. During the year covered by the docu- ments, Covanta brought in about $1 mil- lion from industrial waste, while the county earned about $240,000, the documents show. Growing revenue source The county’s contract with Covanta allows the company to seek out and make deals with companies to take their waste without the county’s approval. The contract does not specify or restrict the materials. A contract extension in September 2019 changed the way Marion County shares the revenue from supplemental waste. Now, the more supplemental waste the facility processes, the more money the county makes. The county previously received half of the revenue, up to a cap of 2,500 tons per year. Covanta kept all the revenue for amounts over 2,500 tons per year. It has averaged around 6,000 tons per year recently. Now, the county receives a fixed rate of $100 per ton, up to a cap of 7,000 tons per year. Above that cap, the county re- ceives $150 per ton. That more than doubled the amount of money the county received from burning supplemental waste. The county got $230,977 during the 2018-19 fiscal year when Covanta burned 6,185 tons of supplemental waste. That increased to $559,623 during the 2019-20 fiscal year when Covanta burned 5,570 tons of supplemental waste. Clean Air Now coalition members said they worry that, as expiring federal energy subsidies make municipal waste incinerators less profitable nationwide, the incinerator will grow into a regional destination for more lucrative special wastes. Covanta officials told the Statesman Journal they have no plans to do that. But it would be allowed under the com- pany’s current pollution permits issued by the Oregon Department of Environ- mental Quality. The permits allow Covanta to burn, among other things, hazardous wastes from small-quantity generators, illicit drugs, pharmaceutical wastes, sewage sludge and discarded or useless com- mercial and industrial materials. The state gets yearly reports about what is being burned at the facility, but they don’t include a detailed analysis, DEQ spokesman Darling said. For in- dustrial and special wastes, Covanta re- ports only the total tons and general type of wastes burned. The incinerator’s future has been in question since July 2019, when a bill re- quested by Covanta that would have designated trash incineration as renew- able energy did not pass in the Oregon Legislature. The proposal would have allowed the company to sell electricity at a higher rate. A similar bill failed in the 2020 Legis- lature. At the time, Covanta and county offi- cials said without the revenue from the energy credits, the plant would have to close or local garbage rates would dou- ble. Neither of those things has hap- pened. Tracy Loew is a reporter at the Statesman Journal. She can be reached at tloew@statesmanjournal.com, 503- 399-6779 or Twitter at @Tracy_Loew. 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