Loading...
BCC Minutes 06/11/2001 W (Solid Waste)June 11, 2001 TRANSCRIPT OF THE MEETING OF THE BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS Naples, Florida, June 11, 2001 LET IT BE REMEMBERED, that the Board of County Commissioners, in and for the County of Collier, and also acting as the Board of Zoning Appeals and as the governing board(s) of such special districts as have been created according to law and having conducted business herein, met on this date at 6 p.m. in WORKSHOP SESSION in Building "F" of the Government Complex, East Naples, Florida, with the following members present: CHAIRMAN: VICE-CHAIRMAN: ALSO PRESENT: James D. Carter, Ph.D Pamela S. Mac'Kie Jim Coletta Donna Fiala Tom Henning Tom Olliff, County Manager David Weigel, County Attorney Page 1 NOTICE OF BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS WORKSHOP/EXPERT PANEL DISCUSSION Notice is hereby given that the Board of County Commissioners of Collier County will conduct an Expert Panel Discussion in the form of a Workshop on Long Term Solid Waste Options on Monday, June 11th, 2001, commencing at 6:00P.M., in the Commission Boardroom, Third Floor, W. Harmon Turner Building, 3301 Tamiami Trail East, Naples, Florida. The public is invited to attend this Workshop/Expert Panel Discussion. For additional information, please contact the Collier County Solid Waste Department at (941)-732-2508. If you are a person with a disability who needs any accommodation in order to participate in this proceeding, you are entitled, at no cost to you, to the provision of certain assistance. Please contact the Collier County Facilities Management Department located at 3301 East Tamiami Trail, Naples, Florida, 34112, (941)-774-8380; assisted listening devices for the hearing impaired are available in the County Commissioner's Office. .' BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS COLLIER COUNTY, FLORIDA JAMES D. CARTER, Ph.D., CHAIRMAN DWIGHT E. BROCK, CLERK By:/sfTeri Michaels Deputy Clerk (SEAL) June tt,200t MR. MUDD: Ladies and gentlemen -- ladies and gentlemen, if I could please get your attention, we could start this workshop. Tonight is a -- is a long-promised workshop for solid waste disposal for Collier County. We've -- we've brought a distinguished panel of speakers here this evening to talk about some of the aspects, and what I'd like to do is to -- is to read the bio's of the speakers as they get prepared to speak so that you know who they are and -- and what they've done in their past that puts them into the distinguished range. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Mr. Mudd, before you do that, as is procedure with all our meetings, we all stand and pledge allegiance to the flag, and then we'll let you go right to work. (The Pledge of Allegiance was recited in unison.} CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you, Mr. Mudd. Please continue. MR. MUDD: Thank you, sir. What we'll try to do in the first hour is to get the presenters, our panel, to talk about their specific topics, and the topics this evening will be -- Dr. Paul Connett will talk about zero waste and his thoughts on waste energy. Dr. Monica Ozores-Hampton will talk about composting. Dr. Kay H. Jones will talk about environmental health and the risk of all the options. Mr. Jack A. Ristau will talk about waste- to-energy, and Dr. Charles A. Stokes will talk about pyrolisis/fluidized bed incineration, but he basically said we'll just talk about gasification. And those will be the topics this evening. The first hour we will have our speakers talk about those specific issues. The second hour we'll take the questions and answers from the commissioners and from -- and from the -- the audience. There are question-and-answer sheets out there if you could fill them out. And the third hour I will -- I will turn it back over as the monitor to the Chairman of the Board of County Commissioners, Dr. Carter, for public comment. Page 2 June 11,2001 And the public comment sheets are on the front table by Russell Tuff in the blue shirt. And if you would like to speak during the public comment period, fill out those sheets, and I will put you in that process. The five-minute rule will be in effect for public comment, and we need to be prompt because there are several -- there are several speakers. So I'd ask you when you get up there to make your point and -- and get it over with and then give the next person time in order to get their thoughts together and to make their comments too. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Would anyone mind if I sit out here? I don't like it with my back to all these people out there. Maybe there is one out there? I wondered if anybody else -- COMMISSIONER HENNING: I think we should all move out there. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Well, I was hoping you would jump in there and agree with me, maybe we wouldn't want to sit with our backs to these people that are here, but that's my choice. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Okay. COMMISSIONER HENNING: I'll take your chair if you don't mind. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Tell you what, Commissioners, move off to the side while the speakers speak so we don't block your visual opportunity to see the speakers. And, Mr. Mudd, as far as procedure, are we allowing each speaker X number of minutes to speak so that I don't later hear that I gave one opportunity longer than another? MR. MUDD: Sir, I asked the speakers to keep their comments in the 10-, 15-minute range. In 15 minutes I will tell them their time is up and move to the next speaker. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you very much speakers for your cooperation. Let's go forward. Page 3 June 11, 2001 MR. MUDD.' Our first speaker will be Dr. Paul Connett. He will talk about zero waste and -- and his thoughts on waste energy. Dr. Connett resides in Canton, New York, and lists his specialty areas as: Interaction of metals with biological systems, chromium and lead in particular, build-up of dioxins in food chains, health risk assessment, the problems, dangers and alternatives to incineration, resource management for a sustainable society, and the toxicity of fluoride. He received his Doctorate in Chemistry from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, and a Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University in England. His 29 years of teaching experience includes 18 years in the chemistry department of St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, where he is currently professor of chemistry. Dr. Connett has been co-author, with his wife, Ellen, of Waste Not, a newsletter published 48 times a year since 1988. He has 41 videotapes on various aspects of waste management that are distributed worldwide. Since 1985 he has given over 1,600 public lectures that have been presented in 49 U.S. States and 47 countries around the world, published numerous papers, and received citizenry and appreciation awards. Without further ado, Dr. Connett. DR. CONNETT: Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Commissioners. I would like to add that I do this for free. I don't get paid for doing this. I do get my expenses covered. Some of the things I've learnt in waste management: First of all, we have an amazing ability to ask the wrong questions, and the wrong question that's consistently asked in the waste business is where shall we put our trash? Shall we put it in a hole in the ground? Should we put in an incinerator is usually the answers. The right question, in my view, is how do we stop making trash? Just going to get this in focus a little bit better. In focus Page 4 June 11,2001 anybody? It's okay. Okay. Fine. Waste is made by mixing. It's made by those ten things on the end of our hands. This is what makes it, and the biggest solution or the first critical step in solving this problem is also with these ten things. It is with the separation. We need separation before collection. We call that source separation, and we need -- and there's a lot of that going on. And we need another vital things which is separation before the landfill, after collection, the separation of the residue. For the foreseeable future, we're not going to get rid of landfills. Look at the three options. If you have - what we have now is dumping everything into a hole in the ground, and people don't like living near that landfill. With an incinerator you still don't get rid of the landfill because you have the bottom ash and the fly ash and the bulky material and bypass material when it's not working properly. In the scheme that I am putting forward, we have, first of all, the source separation followed by reuse and repair centers, recycling of materials, composting of clean source separated organics making the toxics visible. Then you're going to have a residue. And I'm suggesting that that residue instead of going to an incinerator goes to a screening facility where more recycles are pulled out, more toxics are pulled out, and the dirty organic fraction is then stabilized before it is used either as landfill cover or as some Iow-grade purpose, but basically that would leave you with a much smaller nontoxic, nonbiodegradable landfill. I think we all agree that we need to reduce the quantity, the toxicity, and the organic content of waste going to a landfill. But this is where the disagreement comes in because basically we have people here that would want to solve this problem by destroying the materials, zapping them in an incinerator or pyrolysis unit or something to essentially destroy them. The Page 5 June 11, 2001 other approach is to recover them. I would argue that recovering them is a far more important thing to be doing in the 21st century than destroying them. Incineration is a bad idea in my view. It puts highly toxic and persistent substances into the air and then into our food at enormous expense. Some of these substances are transferred to the ash. They can be captured, but then you've got them in the ash, and you've got one ton of ash for every three tons of trash that you burn. The process is poorly monitored. I can go into why I think that. The -- it wastes resources. It wastes energy despite the fact the things are called waste-to-energy plants. You can get three to four times more energy sold -- saved by reusing and recycling the same materials. It's a wasted opportunity to create local jobs and develop local industries, and I also think it's a rather boring approach. So even if you made incineration safe, you would never make it sensible in my view. It simply does not make sense to take so much money to destroy resources. We should be sharing with the future. And I'm not alone in this. This is a comment from the Director of the Eastern -- the European Unions Waste Management Committee (as read): "An incinerator needs to be fed for about 20 to 30 years and in order to be economic needs an enormous input from quite a region." So for 20 to 30 years you stifle innovation, you stifle alternatives just in order to feed that monster which you built. Now, in the past when I've had more time, I've gone into the details of the air emissions from these incinerators. I'm not going to do that tonight. Instead, I want to tell you what other things are going up in smoke. First of all, millions of dollars of taxpayers' money. We're talking $200 million here. Wasted jobs, far more jobs in the alternatives, a waste of energy, a waste of small business opportunities. Flexibility, it's inflexible. It's a lack Page 6 June 11,2001 of vision. It's a waste of resources. It's a lack of imagination, a lack of creativity. It's -- it's abandoning community responsibility, and it's not putting the pressure where we really need to put it on industry for industrial responsibility and, of course, it's not sustainable. A lot of people agree with that and they say, "Look, you know, show me. Show me where it's happening." Well, New Jersey in 1995 was getting 45 percent of it's materials recycled. That's the whole state. If you call it -- throw in construction and demolition debris and auto parts and things like that, it lumps up to 60 percent. That's not bad for a whole state. The Institute of Local Self-reliance has been tracking communities in the United States how much they can do, and as of 1996, 66 communities in California had reached the statewide goal of 50 percent diversion. If we move over to Canada, the City of Guelph where the wet-dry cycle, very simple, one bag for the wet waste, one bag for the dry waste, one bag for the clean organics, one bag for the rest, 98 participation rate, so simple, and they're getting an overall diversion rate of 50 percent -- 58 percent. Now, if you throw in a third container, there's a very useful economic incentive that can be used. You can have people pay for the third container once you've established that this is available, this is available, a lot of options for getting rid of these materials. Then you say, well, the third container is going to be expensive to deal with, and then they charge you for it. Now, with that approach in the Quincy Region in Ontario, they have managed to get -- and this is all documented, these reductions -- 63 percent, 75 percent, and 69 percent, but these are small communities. What about a big city? Halifax, Nova Scotia, was all set to build an incinerator. The citizens organized it, defeated it, and in Page 7 June 11, 2001 the process consultants provided alternative scenarios, and I have this whole report, by the way, and I'll make it available to the commission to copy. But basically a three-way, just a separation recyclables, compostables and the rest with a screening facility, I talked about, with only an estimated 16 percent going to landfill. But I'm happy to tell you within six years they've been doing this, and they are now up to 65 percent diversion, and the whole of Nova Scotia is getting 50 percent diversion. And in the process they created 3,100 jobs. If they built the incinerator, they would have been lucky to get a hundred jobs. Now, Canberra, Australia, the capital of Australia has gone one step further. They've got -- they've announced a no waste, zero waste policy by the year 2010, no waste to landfill. Their landfill looks more like an airport where the government owns the infrastructure and gives out franchises for different companies to handle different materials. We heard from three companies this afternoon that are more than able to handle some very complicated materials in that scenario and make a business out of it. Now, within a few years Canberra had reduced its waste stream by over 50 percent, but please notice what a huge chunk of that reduction is from garden waste and demolition waste. That's good news because in your community that's a big, big percentage of your waste stream, horticultural waste and construction and demolition debris. Now, if you want more information about zero waste from around the world, there is the web page. I'm happy to tell you 38 percent of the municipalities in New Zealand have announced a zero waste strategy by 2015. Now on that site you can also see some very, very exciting ideas because it isn't just the community; industry, too, is announcing zero waste goals. Some of our very, very prominent companies like Hewlett Packard and Page 8 June 11, 2001 Fetzer Breweries and a few other interface carpet manufacturers have announced zero waste policies. I've captured a lot of this on videotape, and I will continue to do it and continue to make it available. But in summary, let me say this, zero waste is recognizing the benefits of recycling but the limitations of recycling. Communities cannot do it all by themselves. They just cannot do it. We need a combination of community responsibility and industrial responsibility, and I would say we need a triangle because for this to happen we need good leadership. We need good political leadership to put these two together. So the way it works in my scenario would be, yes, the community could come in and reduce and reuse and repair and recycle and compost and get the toxics out and tell -- send the toxics back to industry and say "We don't want those toxics" and give a reason, you -- you take care of them. That's called clean production. And then when we look at that residue in Phase One, that residue that goes into the landfill, we have to encourage people to say, "Look, if we can't reuse it, if we can't recycle it, if we can't compost it, you guys shouldn't be making it." So that's what I mean about letting industrial responsibility -- instead of running around performing somersaults to get a magic machine to burn up totally badly designed materials, we should say, "You do a better job; otherwise we'll tax you out of existence." We need that for a sustainable materials policy. And so there are many other things I could say about this, but I suspect I'm running out of-- MR. MUDD: You have three minutes. DR. CONNETT: Three minutes, okay. Well, that's amazing. Key steps, first of all, adopt a zero waste strategy. Announce a goal. You don't have to get it immediately. It's not actually saying we're going to get zero. We're going to get darn close, Page 9 June 11, 2001 number one. It's setting a direction. This is the direction that we want to move in. For hundreds of years we've accepted waste as a given, but, actually, it's a human invention. Nature doesn't make any waste at all. We have got to be more like nature and not tolerate waste. That's the direction that we want to go. It's going to, as I say, require community responsibility, industrial responsibility, and good political leadership. Let's have the citizens working together with the government. We're not stupid. A lot of us have done a lot of homework on this. Let's work together. If you try to build the incinerator, unfortunately, you're going to unleash all that citizen energy to try to stop you for one year, two years, three years, and so that's a waste of time. It's a waste of valuable time and energy. Let's work together for this zero waste vision. It's a vision that we're talking about, and I'm not saying it's going to be easy. There are going to be problems. There are problems encouraging people to do it, to do their little bit of effort, but it seems to me the -- for the decision makers it makes most sense. If you're going to face obstacles, at least choose that set of obstacles which take you in the right direction. Unfortunately, if you choose the problems of landfilling or incineration, when you've overcome those problems of leaching and air emissions and what you do with the ash, you're left where you started. You have not made any progress towards what we have to do which is to learn from those sustainable on a finite planet. Thank you very much. MR. MUDD: Thank you, Dr. Connett. Our next speaker will be Dr. Monica Ozores-Hampton. Dr. Ozores-Hampton has an extended and notable career in the solid waste industry, most distinguished in the areas of compost. She received her Doctorate from the University of Florida, Page 10 June 11,2001 College of Agriculture with her dissertation "Utilization of Municipal Solid Waste Compost as Biological Weed Control in Vegetable Crop Systems," and completed her Master's of Science Degree at Florida International University with the -- with the thesis "Influence of Municipal Solid Waste Compost on Growth, Yield, Nutrients and Heavy Metal Content of Tomatoes and Squash." Dr. Ozores-Hampton's career includes a decade of teaching experience offering horticulture and compost education at Edison Community College in Fort Myers, University of Florida in Fort Lauderdale, Florida -- Florida Internation University in Miami, and agricultural courses in Santiago, Chile, and has been published in the subjects of biological weed control in vegetable crops with compost, manufacturing soil fertility and compost use in Florida. She received Recycling Florida Today, FORA Division's Award for Best Research Institution in 1999 and is a regularly invited speaker at Recycle Florida Today conferences, Florida Organic Farming, Master Gardener and Extension Service Workshops. She is currently a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at the University of Florida Research and Education Center in Immokalee where she is developing and evaluating various compost management techniques. Dr. Ozores-Hampton. DR. OZORES-HAMPTON: Thank you very much for the invitation. My presentation today is going to be directly to composting what we are doing in the county right now and what we can be doing in the future. You already went through my biography a little bit, and I have extensive publication in composting and also consulting. First of all, I want to define what is composting, and it's a biological decomposition process where it's done by microorganisms. Then convert the raw organic material into Page 11 June 11, 2001 humus-like material, and it's done with bacteria, fungii and microorganisms. The key is that is done by biological activity by microorganisms. A lot of the failure in composting is not addressing that the best point is a biological driven process. Why composting? We produce about ten pounds per person per day. In the State of Florida 24 million tons of waste. We are twice of the -- of the national average because we have a large tourist industry. If we recycle we can take about 47 percent of the waste about 11 million tons which is organic, 50 percent, about 60 percent depending on the county. If we compost it it is 11 million tons, we can get about 6 to 8 million tons of compost that can be reutilized in our soils. Now, we have sandy soils where we grow our Florida fruits and vegetables which are Iow in fertility, but also we live in these soils. We have houses. We have golf courses. We have parks, but we have problems with many aspects of soil fertility and pollution -- concern about pollution. Now, compost is three- dimensional. It affects the physical, chemical, and biological activities once it's added to the soil. I will talk a little bit about that at the end of my presentation. Now, what can be composted in the county? Well, like in many other counties and many other places in the country, you have materials that are high in organic and material that are high in carbon. For example, biosolids, which is a very fancy word for sewage, if you want to call it sewage, about 23,000 tons we produce here in the county. We've got food waste, commercial and residential. You have animal manure, and you have other materials, like seaweed, grass clipping, et cetera. Excellent material for composting. Material high in carbon, all the yard waste, biomatter, trash waste, whatever you want to call it, 73,000 tons. You also have municipal solid waste which is household Page 12 June 11,2001 garbage which would include the inorganic trash and organic trash. I'm talking about all the organic trash. The last part you don't see there is wood waste which is material high in carbon. A lot of land clearing that is happening in the county as well. A lot of that, high in carbon material. That can be perfect for composting. Mixing these two high nitrogen and high carbon can give you the best composting process, and you have both of them in the county. This is some of the example, biosolid yard trimming waste, and you have some grass clipping for a lot of the golf courses industry here in the county. How can we compost? I give you three scenarios that are very practical for the county to take over. One is a community-based backyard composting. Very popular. I do it in four different counties. I've done it in this county. It's been very, very successful. Commercial composting, you can take over and take all the organics out of the landfill and compost it yourself like many other counties. And the last one is composting by a local grower. You have a large commercial fruit and vegetable production all around you. They need the organics in the soil. They are very Iow in organic matters. You have three fantastic alternatives. Community-based backyard composting, you can teach people to design and build a composter. With $20 they can build a composter in the back of their yard. I'm not saying everybody's going to do that, but you would be surprised how many people are willing to do that. Another alternative, commercial composter. I've done many, many lectures in Charlotte County, Dade County, Hendry County, and many other counties. When I give a talk they pay $35 and also they give -- they get a composter and they take it home, and they are very happy. Some of my lectures on a Saturday 150 people, and they are willing to do it. So why not to do it here? Page 13 June 11, 2001 The second option, commercial composting. You can do it. There are many, many different groupings and technologies that you can use like a windrow, like in a static pile methods in composting, many, many different technologies and, maybe there will be another talk later on. Like, for example, counties -- go to next slide. One second. Palm Beach Solid Waste Authority many, many years ago made the commitment to basically compost all the yard waste and biosolids, and they have a state-of-the art composting facility for what is called Innovative Composting Facility. You start with a totally enclosed into a building so they control any type of odors very, very well. They go into what is called agitated bed on the right where the turning is automatic, adding water is automatic, the mixing is done, in there to the left -- to your right picture in the compost is going to stay there for about 21 days and in this agitated bed everything is automatically done and by the end it's going to curing windrow type of situation where the product can be sold. Later, they put a screener there where they produce a compost that is a great -- is great for the golf course industry which they sell, I think, $10 a yard. So you tell me it's not possible to be done as they're doing it. They are doing it. Sumter County, they take all the municipal waste, household garbage, and they take it to a composting facility where basically prisoners take all the recycling, where my speaker before me was source separation done by prisoners. That's why I don't have very good pictures. Because they don't allow you to do that, but through the converyor the material is hand picked, all the material that is not organic at the end go into a drum that is by bioconversion which is stay there for three days, and at the end they do a windrow composting. That's another technology. Finally, Walt Disney, they compost all the material coming from Page 14 June 11, 2001 the county. Remember, Walt Disney is a county by itself. They compost biosolids, food waste, animal waste, wood waste, yard waste, in what is called a static pile, and they use that material throughout the whole park. So it would be reduced the amount of organic to be bought for the nurseries. Now, third option in what we are doing -- you are doing in the county right now is composting with the local growers, tomatoes -- Pacific Tomato Growers. Basically, with the help of Dr. George Hillman in the Collier County Solid Waste Authority, the yard waste is being taken to your local growers in Pacific Tomato Growers at the site of Pacific Tomato Growers, and with R&D Soil Builders, which is the one doing the composting, is taking place on the their site. The yard waste is taken to them, and they are putting the money into the composting oven venture and, of course, me. I'm giving the training to make sure that these composting facility of the yard waste, about 70,000 tons of yard waste is being successfully composted. This is some of the pictures I will be showing of that Pacific Tomato Grower Soil Builders. Basically the yard waste arrives into the facility. They do a little bit of grinding to make it to a small particle size. They also use biosolid for the City of Naples to basically get the best carbon-nitrogen ratio for the composting process. Later on they take it into what is called a windrow composting. They have windrow turners and they produce a fantastic finished product that later on can be screened and growers, citrus and vegetable growers, or you from the county can be used for the county for the beautification of the cities. This is some of the spreaders that we use for spreading the compost and citrus production as well as vegetables. What are the benefits of compost and the land? Basically, buffer soil temperatures, increase water holding capacities, a very important point lately because the rain is so Page 15 June 11,2001 small, so with less than one percent of organic matters, you're not going to get a lot of holding capacity. If you add this material, you can increase that. Also increase carrying capacity, the ability of the soil to retain for nutrients, therefore, lowering the concern of pollution from fertilizer. You increase basically the efficiency of the fertilizer and lowering the concern for pollution. Increase the organic matter and the structure of the soil, increase -- increase the microbic activity of the soil and also prevent erosion, which is really -- DOT construction all over the county you've got a lot of erosion. Now, what can we do in the future for Collier County? We can compost more besides the 70,000 tons we are already composting. We can take all the biosolids. We need it for the best composting process. These products normally have between three and five percent nitrogen. It is excellent for producing the type of carbon-nitrogen ratio to start the composting process, so we can take that. We can take all the food waste from commercial and residential, food waste about two percent nitrogen, excellent amendment for a high carbon material like yard waste or land clearing. We can do education. I have a composting school that address backyard composting as well as commercial composting where I make sure that people that start a composting venture are no failure, but they are a success. Now, lastly, I just want to talk a little bit about marketing compost products. There is too many issues about that. One, have a competitive price and effective market strategy, and you will be very successful. That's my -- you know, my take. Many other people can add a lot more. Thank you. In conclusion, the need for composting is real. You have the materials available such as yard trimming, food waste, biosolids, animal manure. You have a lot of seaweed. It Page 16 June 11,2001 can be composted and other organic material that it would be perfect for the composting process, about 50 to 60 percent of the waste stream, quite a bit, almost half of that. Now these programs, these composting programs have the potential to increase compost production in use as a component of a sustainable horticulture production system. I'm not only talking about only to grow vegetables or fruits but in your backyard, from your golf course, in your park, any sustainable horticulture system that we use surrounding us. And, lastly, I just want to take -- I love this picture because it's what any county in South Florida is becoming; right? Right? And I just wanted to leave you with the idea of get away from waste disposal and get into resource utilization because what you have is a resource that we can utilize. Thank you very much. MR. MUDD: Our next speaker will be Dr. Kay H. Jones, and he'll talk to us about environmental health and -- and the risk of all the alternatives. Dr. Kay Jones has had a long and distinguished career spanning 42 years of professional service dealing with environmental protection in both public and private sectors. He received his Ph.D. In Environmental Engineering with minors in Chemical Engineering and Environmental Toxicology from the University of California at Berkeley. He also was awarded a Master of Science Degree in Environmental Engineering from Berkeley, as well as a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Washington. During his distinguished professional career in environmental protection, Dr. Jones was involved in over -- over 40 solid waste management projects addressing permitting issues, technology assessment, risk analysis, and has served as a court-recognized qualified expert witness on more than 20 permitting related proceedings. Some brief examples of Dr. Jones' varied expertise and Page 17 June 11,2001 experience as an international and nationally recognized authority on the environmental risks of solid waste management are: He authored the President's initiative on acid rain for the Carter Administration while serving as a member of the President's Council on Environmental Quality; He managed research in the areas of stationary and mobile source emissions control, as well as meteorology and atmospheric chemistry during his tenure at the -- at the predecessor organization of the US EPA. He directed the air quality management pilot study for the NATO Committee on the Challenges to Modern Society and served as the Director of the US/Soviet bilateral program on research on the control of mobile source emissions under the Nixon Administration. He's directed all environmental protection programs at the U.S. Air Force missile launch complex, Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. And he's taught environmental engineering and related air quality management courses for 12 years at George Washington, Howard, and Drexel Universities. Dr. Kay Jones is currently a professor of Zephyr Consulting in Seattle, Washington, and has held the following positions: Vice President of Roy F. Weston, Inc; professor of Environmental Engineering at Drexel University; Senior Advisor for Air Quality at the Council on Environmental Quality for the Ford and Carter Administrations; Consultant to the World Health Organization; Senior Technical Advisor and Research Manager, Office of Air Programs, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; and Bioenvironmental Engineer U.S. Air Force. Without further ado, Dr. Jones. DR. JONES: Thank you. I believe that we passed out copies of my overheads to the Commissioners, and I did that so you can take notes for the quiz we'll have at the end -- end of the evening. What I'm going to talk about today is risk assessment and risk Page 18 June 11, 2001 analysis of the various solid waste options. Heretofore, I think almost all of you believe that probably incinerators were the only risky option that we had before us, and I want to present some data, and this information comes from two peer-reviewed papers that I published that can be made available if you so desire. All the options in solid waste management have common health risks. In particular -- and I'm going to startle you -- in particular as it relates to dioxins. The different options have different levels of risk, obviously, and as I said before past risk assessments have focused primarily on waste-to-energy facilities. Dioxins are associated with all of these options. We must differentiate between hypothetical and statistical risks. And when I say that -- when we talk about health risks of dioxins and metals and so forth, we're talking about hypothetical risks which were based on models that we use to calculate risks which may be common across all of these strategies. Statistical risks are -- on the other hand, are based on actual observed death rates, and one of the -- one of the areas where you've not really addressed risks is transportation risks. If you were going to load up all your waste into a train and haul it halfway across two states and so forth, we do have train wrecks. We read about train wrecks all the time. So we should be accounting death and injury due to increased transportation for some of the strategies. The same risk assessment models apply and the same assumptions apply to the risk analysis of all the alternatives. And, obviously, site specific data we influence comparative to risk assessment estimates especially as they relate to composting. When I talk about composting today, I'm going to be talking about the risk associated just for the composting of municipal waste rather than other agricultural waste which could influence or dilute -- possibly dilute the system. Interestingly enough, Page 19 June 11,2001 you're a source of dioxins every time you put your garbage can out on the corner. I conducted a mass balance around a modern waste energy facility in Spokane, Washington, and if you look at the upper right there, you can see that there's about -- I'm not going to bore you with the -- with the units but there's about 15.3 micrograms of dioxins in every ton of waste that comes into a waste facility. And what comes out the stack is only about three percent of that, only three percent. So we have a removal of these facilities actually remove dioxins from the environment, because what happened even though it may produce some dioxins, it -- internally in the system it ends up in the ash and goes in an ash monofil where it can go -- it can go nowhere. It can't evaporate in the atmosphere. It can't go in the ground water. It's like putting it in concrete. So we are interning the dioxins when we have a waste-to-energy facility in operation. If we were to compost that material -- can we focus this a little bit? Is that a little better? This is some data taken in Germany of the amount of dioxins that exist in various types of waste, and you can see mixed waste, plant waste, bark, special matter, and some other unspecified data, but when you take the data from Spokane and you assume you get about 70 percent residual of compost out of that waste stream and you also remove the metals and other things out of the stream, we end up with about 29 micrograms per ton of dioxins in the compost. So now what do we do with the compost? Well, here are a variety of options showing what -- what would happen if we look at the alternatives. I ran the calculations here for an 800-ton-per- day facility just arbitrarily. We would have about 11.1 milligrams of dioxins coming into the -- into the system a day. If we put in a resource -- resource recovery facility we will have about 3/10 of a miligram to the atmosphere. If we put it in a landfill -- and what Page 20 June 11,2001 happens today in landfills you have to put in gas recovery systems. You need to collect that gas and burn the gas. You'll either burn it in a flare, an lC engine, or in a turbine, and they all produce dioxins, and it's all been measured. And so they will put out about 3/10 of a milligram per day out of the stack from that particular incineration facility. In this case, I did this for flare. Now, if we compost the material, we have 11.1 milligrams coming in, you've got 11.1 milligrams coming out of the other end of the compost system. Where does that go? Well, if you sell it to your neighbors and so forth and you put it in your backyard put it around your rose bushes and so forth, you expose children and animals and so forth to that dioxin in that soil material. I'll show you some comparisons. Or you take the compost and put it back in the landfill and then you produce gaseous materials which then moves the dioxins to the atmosphere. Now, if we -- if we compare a stack, this is what we would see. If we model the dioxins coming out of the stack. We plant a point where the plumb hits the most how often, the most frequent during the year, we would end up with about 800th of a nanogram per square meter per year of deposition through wet and dry deposition of dioxins coming out of the atmosphere. If we take that same amount of material and depending on how much material we put around our rose bushes and backyard garden, you could have anywhere from 59 to over 2000 nanograms per square meter per year to place around plants using agricultural operations. The inhalation risk, as we're breathing the air, well, that doesn't apply to compost, but if we compare the same model we used to do the risk assessment of a child eating dirt in the yard and compare that of eating the dirt where materials are deposited from the stack versus here, you can see the risk is tremendously different. The person we're most concerned about Page 21 June 11,2001 for dioxin exposure from any of these sources is the -- is the subsistence farmer, especially from the atmospheric deposition on the foder and the feed and corn and so forth. The cow eats it and then you eat the cow, drink the cow's milk, or eat the beef, and so this is sort of a typical number we would see in terms of the subsistence farmer. He would be the maximum exposed guy. Over here we don't know because we don't know what the application is, but if that farmer puts it as agricultural land he's actually putting dioxins on the land, so this has a lot of variability about it, but for sure if he were using that on his land and his cattle -- because cattle eat dirt, he would be -- the cows would be eating a lot of dioxins here and would surely probably have a greater risk on an equivalent basis to this case over here (indicating). I won't -- I won't talk about metals, but I know at one point in time I looked at this. It was an operation called Agrisoil, operations here doing municipal waste, and you have a lot of metals in a lot of places that had real problems especially with lead, excess lead, again, not being able to use the material for composting. So you can look -- you can -- these tables are available. You can compare what the amount of cadmium, lead and mercury would be using a stacked deposition versus compost. Let me talk about landfills. I did an analysis of -- of 750 tons a day of waste and determine how much gas was generated over a 70-year period, and then I compared the risks of these options of a waste-to-energy facility, a landfill flare, a landfill internal combustion engine, and you can see that the risks are -- are higher in all cases for the landfill case as opposed to the waste- to-energy. Again, site specific data would determine this because you don't know whether the field you live in that close to the landfill or that close to the waste management facility. Page 22 June 11,2001 But, still, using the same models and the same dioxins -- dioxin measured -- measured levels you can see these compared risks. I'm not, again, suggesting that any of these are unacceptable, but the point is that they're comparable. There isn't one that's more -- necessarily more risk than the other, though in this case the lC engine case has a higher individual risk. There's other considerations when you talk about emissions. You don't have to look at the numbers. Everybody's talking about -- talking about global warming. That's the big -- big thing today. Turns out that landfills put out a great deal more global warming gases than a waste-to-energy facility does. Recycling risks. We don't think much about that. Industrial accidents have been two people killed in the last two years at recycling facilities. One in Seattle, one in Oregon -- one in California. Deinking sludge, newspaper recycling. You got a -- you got to get that ink out of that newspaper somehow before you can reuse it. So what do you do with the sludge; put it in a landfill or you burn it. When you burn it, you emit dioxins. And it turns out that the actual facility that I had analyzed in California that the risk -- the people living adjacent to the -- to the recycling facility, newspaper deinking facility, they had the same risk as somebody living next to a facility that was burning all the waste, not just recycling ten percent of the newsprint. The delacquering operations, the Holy Grail, aluminum can recycling. One of the biggest single source of dioxin emissions in this country are from the delacquering of aluminum cans. You don't hear much about it, but they are tremendous in their history to not have a lot of air pollution control on those facilities. Anything that involves heating, melting, grinding can all cause emissions of metals, emissions of dioxins, and I think I already mentioned to you the transportation difference being one that really should be considered when you consider all the options. Page 23 June 11,2001 Now, let me try to put -- put the dioxin issue in a little perspective. If we had an 800-ton-per-day facility and had it properly designed with the proper stack and so forth, the risk to a subsistence farmer living maybe two kilometers from that stack would be about .28 chances in a million. Anything less than one chance in a million is considered insignificant by the Federal EPA, and when they clean up superfund sites they clean up to a hundred chances in a million and then look at cost of them trying to reduce that risk from a hundred down towards one in a million. Diesel trucks, probably the biggest single source of dioxin exposure in my personal and professional opinion are diesel exhaust in this country, and you can actually -- and I have actually published a paper on this in the journal Risk Assessment where a hundred trucks -- there's more than a hundred trucks per hour going down the highway out here, I can tell you that for sure, and if you're a farmer living within a thousand -- hundred to a thousand meters and raise your own cattle and so forth, you have a risk of 6/10 to 18 -- 18 chances in a million of contracting cancer, much much, higher than this here. Now, every time you eat a Big Mac, every time you eat pizza, every time you eat Kentucky Fried Chicken you're consuming dioxins. Actual measurements published in the literature and you're consuming dioxins. And so you can calculate over a lifetime if you eat ten Big Macs in 70 years -- ten Big Macs in 70 years, you have about a 10th of this risk up here and it turns out that individual risk, if you lived at maximum impact in the stack, you're about 1/10 of what the farmer would get if he lived there because you're not eating the beef and the dairy products. Your children are getting the soil and you're breathing it and so forth. So what I'm saying here is that for an adult living downwind of a facility, his total risk, lifetime risk at that single point in Page 24 June 11,2001 space is about the equal to about ten Big Macs over a 70-year period. So I tried to present to you is -- I'm not trying to say waste-to-energy. I'm not saying it's landfills. I'm not saying that it's composting. But they all have the same types of risk, and you must understand that. You're not trading one zero for one at all, and I think it's important to understand that the dioxin issue is not as large as people perceive -- perceive it to be because dioxins are everywhere. Dioxins are everywhere. In fact, there is some evidence to suggest that even during composting operations the dioxins are actually formed during composting. So there was a case where they found some ball clay areas where they were feeding the chickens. The chickens had some elevated dioxin levels. It turns out it came from the ball clay. The ball clay came from a virgin source somewhere in Louisiana, and it had dioxins in it probably due to just natural decay of organic material. So I hope you will have some good questions later on. Thank you very much. MR. MUDD: Our next speaker will be Mr. Jack A. Ristau, Vice President, Business Development of Wheelabrator Technologies, Inc. Jack Ristau has over 27 years of experience in water, wastewater, solid waste management, and energy recovery projects in United States and overseas. Since joining Wheelabrator in 1984 he has been responsible for and directed a number of resource recovery business development activities in the United States. Dr. Ristau served as the Project Manager and Business Developer for the 2250-ton-per day South Broward waste-to-energy plant in Florida. Currently Mr. Ristau directs international waste-to-energy project developments in Hong Kong, Singapore, Guam, and Taiwan. In addition, his international experience includes business development work in Mexico, Turkey, United Kingdom, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Barbados. Page 25 June 11,2001 Presently, Mr. Ristau provided resource recovery and solid waste management consulting services for the MITRE Corporation. Prior to MITRE he served as a Project Manager with Hayden Wegman Engineers, Inc., and Metcalf and Eddy, Inc. In addition to Mr. Ristau's undergraduate degree in civil engineering from the Pennsylvania State University -- State University, he holds a Master's Degree from the Industrial Management Department at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. Mr. Ristau is also a licensed professional engineer. Sir. MR. RISTAU'. Thank you very much. I handed out to commissioners a package. What I'm going to be doing is taking some of those slides out of that package. I'm not going to try to go through all 46, kind of condense it down to get through in 15 minutes that I have here. What I'm going to do is not talk about our company but really talk about the waste-to-energy industry in the United States as it stands now. As the slide says a overview, and what we'll be talking about here really is in three parts to make it easier to get through technology, the energy-generation aspect, and some of the environment benefits that the communities see with the use of waste-to-energy facilities here in the United States. You have the advantage here in Florida of being able to visit some 14 waste-to-energy plants. You have one up here in Lee County, two in Broward, one in Pinellas, and one in Tampa, and almost always you can get in and take a tour of these facilities, but in general this is what you see no matter what technology, other than possibly what's called refuse derived fuel. This is a description -- a schematic of what is called a mass burn facility, that being all the trash that's left over after recycling comes to the facility for further processing and turning it into energy and finally to the landfill. What we have is the Page 26 June 11, 2001 trucks coming in the enclosed receiving area, discharged into a storage hopper which acts at this point in some sense a fuel storage. By crane it's taken into a hopper and then fed into the furnace where it is especially designed grates. The heat travels up through a boiler, recovers the heat to form the steam to more often than not to produce electricity. And then finally the emissions come out of the facilities clean through various air emission control devices. The ash comes off the -- out of the grates of the boiler, and that more often than not ends up at a landfill for ultimate disposal. Very simplistic but this is very basic to the process that we have in the United States as well as other countries across the world. In the United States there is some 102 facilities operating, 70 of these facilities as shown in that diagram. There are 19 facilities that are called refuse derived fuel facilities where there's a lot of reprocessing of the trash, grinding, sorting, some mechanical removing of certain materials and then finally going into a unit for combustion and recovery of energy. There are a lot of smaller facilities, generally less than 250 tons per day of capacity, processing trash here in the United States. On a percentage basis the United States has been processing waste-to-energy plants approximately 15 percent. This remains very much level here for the last five to six years. In Europe, depending on the country, but overall you'll see approximately 30 percent of the waste stream ends up in waste-to-energy plants, another 30 to 40 percent for recycling, and the balance going to landfill. Annually, 30 million tons of trash are processed in these facilities with 102 facilities serving some 37 million, and there are 31 states that have these. Florida has -- has 14 now out of that 102 plants that I mentioned before. This diagram just simply shows the annual daily capacity of these combined plants. As it shows you in tons per day, we're Page 27 June 11, 2001 processing in these facilities approximately a hundred thousand tons per day across the United States is how these things are being utilized in the United States, and it remains pretty much constant and largely due to recycling efforts and reduction efforts to try to help augment these facilities as part of a disposal group of technologies. And, of course, as mentioned before the air emission control technologies through -- controlled through combustion control. Start by controlling the emissions by having good control, fabric filters for taking out particulates, scrubbers for -- sulfur dioxide, nitric oxide, and goes on and on here, and finally ash treatment. So these systems have been in operation for the past 25 years. Our company was one of the first companies to build a commercial waste-to-energy plant in 1975 in Saugus, Massachusetts, right outside of Boston. That facility is still operating today as a very viable commercial operation. This is somewhat homegrown. You can look at it this way. You're growing energy. That is one of the benefits that communities see out of using waste-to- energy as part of their solution in dealing with solid waste. Right now those 102 facilities serving some 250 -- two and a half million, some 2600 megawatts of power, which is quite substantial, steam used to generate and, of course, about 3 percent of the total energy produced is being produced by 3/10 of a percent -- excuse me -- is being produced by waste-to-energy facilities. There are several -- a number of states that have deemed by definition that this is a renewable energy. These are Pennsylvania -- of course, Florida is one of them as a renewable. And, of course, that becomes an important definition as we go through different tax legislation here, and right now landfills -- excuse me, waste-to-energy plants but also landfill gas projects Page 28 June 11,2001 are now being considered for certain tax credits to help stimulate these businesses to produce more electricity as we're looking towards our problems here in the United States with electric generation. Environmental benefits, to wrap this up in the last section, these are the major areas meeting clean air standards, reducing greenhouse gases. We'll go through these one by one. Certainly, the emissions from these facilities are stringently controlled, not only by control process itself, but the air emission equipment on the back, limits on opacity, standards for good combustion practices and operator training all add to producing an effluent that's clean and safe. We also have the benefit of reducing greenhouse gases, as Dr. Jones mentioned briefly, producing methane gases from -- from generation of organics and, of course, by burning electricity, making electricity from refuse rather than fossil fuels, you're offsetting fossil fuel emissions. Little statistics from EPA, electricity produced from trash some 6 million metric tons from carbon equivalent of greenhouse gases are reduced by displacing fossil fuels, so there's an added global benefit. And trash management produces some five million metric tons of greenhouse -- greenhouse gases by eliminating methane emissions from land disposal. The general principle here is landfills know nothing about weight. They only know something about volume so when you run into a problem with land disposal it's not because the landfill got too heavy -- it got too big. And this is the ma]or reason waste-to-energy plants are -- are utilized. Because you can take 10 tons of trash and reduce it by volume down to one. So you reduce that volume of that trash some 90 percent and, as someone had noted before, 30 percent by weight. Ash disposal ends up in a lined landfill just like trash does today. The trash Page 29 June 11, 2001 can be used as -- excuse me, your ash can be used as daily cover. Pinellas County up in Florida is doing that now, using it for cover material, and a number of other places in Pennsylvania use ash as daily cover. The fact is the ash after combustion can be used for cover or other materials and can, of course, go into the same landfill that your trash is going into at this time. This point here is that recycling doesn't have to compete with waste-to-energy. It's part of a process, part of a tool -- toolbox of tools that you might have as we see on these waste-to-energy plant -- these 102 plants, these communities are averaging at least 33 percent of recycling materials, 5 percent above the national average. I think that's a key point here is that if a guy came to build your porch or an addition to your house and came up with only one tool, would you hire that guy? I don't think so. What you're looking to do as these communities grow is have somebody who has multiple tools in the toolbox to build the house. In this case, waste-to-energy, recycling, and all those other technologies are viable components of a solid waste plan. These plants also have the opportunity to recovering ferrous and nonferrous materials of quite sizable numbers and, of course, as I noted before, the ash can be used for cover material. And we're down to the last slide. One issue that is very -- very important here in Florida like most other places, though, is that the facilities can be built with dry cooling towers to conserve water. These plants are built with zero water discharge, so there's no processed water in the facility. None of the processed water in the facility gets disposed of in streams. It's all recycled and reused within the facility and, of course, there's also storm water management at all these facilities. And that in total is the -- is the industry as it stands here in the United States. I included those in the -- in the packages for the commissioners for their look, and I hope I've condensed it down Page 30 June 11, 2001 enough rather than rambling on. Thank you very much. MR. MUDD: Our final speaker will be Dr. Charles A. Stokes, a resident of Naples. He has a Doctorate in Chemical Engineering from M.I.T. He has 25 years as -- chief technical officer for two petrochemical companies and for the chemical division of a major integrated petroleum company. He has 25 years of experience as a consultant to two ma]or international chemical, petroleum, and energy industries with emphasis on developing new technologies and new ventures. Special expertise in methanol, basic petrochemicals, and finely divided materials such as carbon black and silica. Other special areas are VOC controls, synthetic fuels, gasification of coals and biomass, alternative motor fuels, the management of solid waste by conversion to energy or compost with recovery of recyclables, and renewable energies. Dr. Stokes. DR. STOKES: May I appear here at the counter? I have no slides. May I speak from here? MR. MUDD: Yes, sir. DR. STOKES: Thanks very much. I'm delighted to be here. My PowerPoint presentation time was taken up this evening from the flood in Houston where I arrived home last night at 7 p.m. I didn't think it could ever rain that much. I'm -- I'm honored to appear here with these gentlemen, and I learned a great deal from each and every one of them tonight. I thought I knew quite a bit about solid waste, but I've learned an awful lot more tonight. You've done a good job, Jim, of assembling people. While I'm here to speak on the gasification of municipal solid waste and the latest technology for waste by direct -- for use of waste by direct combustion to make energy, there are some general remarks I want to make. First, whatever the county will do to decide on a long-term solution will take time. There's no Page 31 June 11,2001 way the county can decide in a few weeks or a few months on a final technology, let alone a final responsible vendor. So everyone should let his or her blood pressure go back to normal and calmly observe what will be a lengthy and difficult process. I note from these other gentlemen that there are risks in all of the processes, and I note that waste-to-energy the risks are rather minimal. I see Senator Saunders smiling because he was into this with us 15 years ago up to his ears. Now, we're talking being a project that would cost upwards of 150 to 200 million dollars whether spent up front or in increments over some years, and that last statement's kind of important. I mean, you don't get out of spending the money; you just spread it out perhaps farther. You can spend it all at once and get a total solution or spread the expenditures out over a number of years. Even more importantly, the county must not get in a mess like Lake County which has a good waste-to-energy plan and a lousy deal. I was born and raised in Lake County and still own property there. My father was the longest serving commissioner, so I kept up with every nuance of their sad saga on waste-to-energy. It is the way not to do it. Second, whatever the county does must be done by a large financially strong, highly capable vendor that has a track record of accomplishing what they say they can do. The county by itself cannot build, operate, and coordinate a solid waste solution by putting together a lot of miscellaneous pieces that in theory can in totality handle the whole problem. This is a recipe for absolute disaster. Fifteen or so years ago we rejected waste-to- energy officially on the basis of the cost. Behind the scenes the real reasons were environmental objections on the one hand and a hope that by waiting technologies would get better and cheaper. Well, I'm happy to say that the former is true. We do have better technologies, but they are not cheaper than 15 years Page 32 June 11, 2001 ago. It is the opposite, because they are far lower in emissions and higher in recycling. The first of these large improvements in waste-to-energy is based on evolutionary development, not revolutionary, of exactly the same technology that was selected 15 years ago in this very room. It's front-end separation of metals for sale, fuel sizing, combustion in a limestone augmented fluidized bed boiler operating at lower temperatures and with far more homogenous combustion conditions than in mass burn plants like Lee County. This leads to less nitrogen oxide and diminimus amounts of dioxin as Dr. Thomas has pointed out. Following the combustion is improved flu gas clean-up that lowers dioxin and mercury well below the already state and federally approved levels that Lee County smoothly out functioning waste-to-energy plant. Lee County's plant, by the way, is a model world-class mass burn plant, not that there aren't a number of others around the country. There are a lot of goods ones. Now, many of you have perhaps visited this; if not, you should. Don't be armchair observers. We have too many of these already. The ash from fluidized bed combuster can be screened and either sold for a small amount or given away for use in road stabilization, in concrete block manufacture and so forth. Thus, the degree of recycling with waste-to-energy can be 90 to 95 percent. Now, 52 percent of all of our electrical energy is made from coal. The amount will grow even if temporarily the portion decreases due to the use of gas. Florida has many coal-based power plants. Most of you probably didn't know that. The closest is only as far away as Lakeland where interestingly enough they separate their municipal waste into recyclables and stuff for the landfill and a fuel fraction which is coal fired with coal. They've been doing that 15 or 20 years. There are large Page 33 June 11,2001 coal-based power plants in Tampa, Crystal River, Orlando, Jacksonville, Gainesville, Palatka, and several more in West Florida. The most modern coal-fired power plant in the world, guess where it is; it's in Brewster, Florida, just south of Lakeland. Fuel prepared from MSW is cleaner than coal. It is quite reasonable to combust a fuel cleaner than coal to make power, thus displacing coal-fired capacity. Quite reasonable to do that. It isn't necessarily what you want to do and, by the way, I am entirely method neutral in coming here. I don't advocate any of these methods over another. I represent none of the people. If all the MSW in the U.S. Were burned to make power, it would make about I percent as much power as the coal or, as Jack pointed out, 3/10 percent of the total power. So we're not talking about burning very much stuff. MR. KRASOWSKI: Pyrolysis. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Excuse me. It'll be quiet while people are speaking. MR. KRASOWSKI: Agenda says pyrolysis. DR. STOKES: Now, the ultra-clean coal-fired plan at Brewster first gasifies the coal and then compbusts the gas. As can also be done with MSW, and that's the other part of my presentation. And I will iljustrate it with Australian experience which is now operating where we first gasify the waste and then combust the gas. This Australian -- by the way, the fluid bed combustion technology that I referred to a representative of that company. Frank Summerville is in the audience; that is the Foster Wheeler Company in case that's important for anyone to ask a question. The Australian technology originated in the United States as a means of converting ground, wood, sawdust, and bark into clean fuel gas for power generation in engines. These engines are much more efficient than the steam cycles used in waste-to- Page 34 June 11, 2001 energy plants. I actually was a consultant to the developer of the process in it's early stages when they were solely concerned with gasifying biomass. They were then bought out by a progressive and highly successful Australian company who operates many landfill gas power plants around the world. They decided to concentrate on garbage-to-energy because they couldn't find enough Iow-cost wood waste to bother with, and that's why I quit consulting for the company six or eight years ago. We couldn't find anything to put in our gasifier. Now, these people in Australia then bought a novel front-end process to prepare gasification feed stock so it could be gasified. This front digests the MSW after separating out large materials in a pressure vessel and ends up by recovering very clean metals which are highly saleable and glass is dropped out for landfill. Prepared feed is then partially dried and gasified and fed to a series of efficient engines to generate power. They are offering this process in the U.S. Under the Bright Star Environmental name and you may see 150 ton per day operating on MSW in Gehlong, Australia. It ran for a while on the green waste that we now compost or rather grind up. I have not seen the plant. I can't vouch for how convincing it is. The leftovers from their process are small amount of innocuous ash which can be used as soil conditioner simply landfilled. I understand from Malcolm Pirnie that the vendor will be making a detailed presentation to them later this month. Now, why would you consider these processors and under what circumstances? First, they offer a total solution completely compatible with curbside recycling. They could allow you to drop curbside recycling or increase it at your option. It's a matter of economics and common sense. Recycling is not high tech or high capital. It's best motivators are people of good will and a very active county program to help people feel good and help Page 35 June 11, 2001 them do it themselves. Second, Dr. Thomas has already told you these conversion processes are kinder to the atmosphere, to the environment apparently than the other alternatives. He's an expert on this, and EPA has been saying the same things for years. I thought the county would never depart from landfill, so I threw away a whole file drawer of literature I had on the subject. Now, under the right conditions the third reason you might consider such processors -- under the right conditions, they may have give a very reasonable cost per ton. The right conditions are, you must have flow control of enough waste to keep the plant full. Don't make Lake County's fatal error of having a plant they couldn't fill up. The plant must be based on proven technology offered by a totally reliable vendor who is willing to operate the plant for at least three years if you choose. The plant must be owned and operated by the county and financed on about a 30-year bonded basis with Iow interest taxable bonds; otherwise the capital charges will make the cost too high. The plant must be Iow maintenance and maintained well, but it's absolutely essential that you must find a way to get a decent price for power, not merely the lowest incremental cost that some power plant -- power company offers you. If you cannot do that, you probably won't do waste-to-energy, and that's why the curve of waste management plants versus years that Jack showed you is flat. The energy price paid for the power is too Iow. So there must be a way found to get a decent price for power. You may want to consider the county becoming a municipal power utility. These are common in Florida and highly successful. That's why the City of Los Angeles today has no power shortage and their prices are okay. Now, what I say here will be considered highly optimistic by cautious consultants. That is that you can perhaps reach down into the 50 to 60 dollar a ton range by waste-to-energy. That's Page 36 June 11,2001 optimistic but I worked for 50 years on projects with people who know how to make difficult projects doable. I'm too damned old to do it again, but at least I can cheer you on and steer you the kinds of people that can do it should it be your pleasure. So I think that a final advice I have is look before you leap. Don't buy any process or any plant unless you go there and put your hand on it and have your staff look at it and maybe even send Jim Mudd to Australia for four weeks to work in the plant down there. MR. RISTAU: It's only 22 hours in an airplane. DR. STOKES: So I shall be very happy to help when I can, and thank you very much. MR. MUDD: Now we enter the question-and-answer period. I had envisioned this as a time, and I have some questions that were -- were given by the audience. John, are there additional ones? MR. DUNNUCK.. No. You got them all. MR. MUDD.. Okay. I've got them all? MS. KRASOWSKI: How can you ask questions if you haven't heard -- if you haven't heard the speakers? Seriously, know before at the beginning, I mean, you know, different speakers, and you need to be able to hear what they say-- CHAIRMAN CARTER: Ma'am -- ma'am, the order of the workshop is that these were experts who made their presentations. You can write down any question and give it here. We will address it. You also have five minutes under public participation to sign up on a sheet and come and speak. MR. KRASOWSKI: Isn't there going to be a discussion? CHAIRMAN CARTER: Bob, I will run the meeting. Thank you. MR. KRASOWSKI: It's a question. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Commissioners may ask questions, that's; why they're coming back to the table. We will follow process tonight. This will be an orderly meeting. We will be Page 37 June 11,2001 ladies and gentlemen dealing with ladies and gentlemen. Anyone that can't accept that, I will have the bailiff remove you from the room. I have no problem doing that, so please let's do it the way we need to do it. You're all great people. I thank you for being here. Let's proceed, Mr. Mudd. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Mr. Chairman or Mr. Mudd, I just didn't understand one point and that is, did questions have to be turned in already, or could somebody be writing out their question at this point? MR. MUDD.. If they -- if they have questions, ma'am, they can -- they can turn them in at any time to get -- to get -- if they had a question during the briefing, there are additional question sheets in the front, and this I'll give directly to the speakers that they have the question. The speaker will read the question for the audience and then answer it, and if you have questions you can do the same. Following the question-and-answer period, then we'll open it up to public comment, and the public comment sheets are also on the front, and I have some 13 now that are sitting here in the front of the table, and they'll have a five- minute period of time in order to answer. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE.. So just to make it clear, ma'am, you were worried about that you couldn't ask questions earlier. The forms are here. Please feel free to fill them out now and bring them on up any time during the the next part of the process. MR. MUDD: If you would like to start, Dr. Jones, with your question. DR. JONES: Yeah. This question came from Arlene Bower, I believe, and it's a planted question by my good friend Dr. Connett, and the question is, after the multi millions of dollars in your error -- my error -- in recommending that an electrostatic precipitator would be sufficient for safety in Detroit, why should Page 38 June 11, 2001 your opinion hold water here? Well, that's an absolutely false statement. When the Detroit incinerator was permitted, it was permitted under the federal guidance at that time relative to air pollution control, and electrostatic precipitators were state of the art at that time, and since that time the new federal regulations have come into place, and that facility was retrofitted just as Pinellas County is being retrofitted. It only had the electrostatic precipitators on it until a few years ago, and it's being retrofitted, so no way did I have anything to do with the decision about the technology that was put on the Detroit incinerator. DR. CONNETT: Can I respond to that, please? I happened to be in Detroit at that time. I even took part in a debate on live television with Dr. Jones. He was asked by citizens and he was asked by representatives of the Canadian government about his claim that electrostatic precipitators were state of the art for control of dioxin. I pointed out at that time that that was nonsense and he should have known it was nonsence. At that time it was well known that limes -- a combination of lime scrubbers and back houses were more effective for removing dioxin. He denied that, but within -- when he talks about now it was retrofitted like other plants, but he hasn't pointed out that this had to be retrofitted within just two or three years of the start up of the largest incinerator in the world. It cost Detroit millions of dollars to do that, and it was based upon his testimony that they went ahead with electrostatic precipitators knowing full well that there was better equipment there. The Canadian government even took out a lawsuit on that. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I'm sorry to be ignorant, but electrostatic precipitators are a method for removal of dioxin from the waste-to-energy process? DR. CONNETT: No. They are actually particulate control Page 39 June 11,2001 devices. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I see. DR. CONNETT: They're not -- two things; they're not very good at the smallest particles. That's why fabric filters were preferred and, secondly, it's now become apparent that much of the dioxin that comes out of an incinerator is actually made in the air pollution control devices, and the highest emissions came from these facilities including the Detroit incinerator where the gases went into the electrostatic precipitator above 200 degrees Celsius. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And but current technology does not include this method? So what we are -- DR. CONNETT.- No. No. No. Today it's .- it's accepted what the Canadian government was saying, what citizens and I were saying and I was saying in that live TV debate and Dr. Jones denied on live television. I've got the videotape. We can make that available. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I don't know where we're going with this, but do you think we can get back to the subject, material at hand, where we are as far as today goes? I could care less what happened back 10, 15 years ago. I want to know where we are today as far as the technology goes. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Next question, please. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Thank you, Tom. MR. RISTAU: Just one at a time? MR. MUDD: One at a time. MR. RISTAU: Okay. That'll be fine. The -- this is from Dexter Bellamy, I believe it is. Thank you, Mr. Dexter. "Why have there been no more waste-to-energy plants built in the -- the United States -- "1'11 caveat that" -- in the past six years if it's such a good -- good plan?" There's two reasons why. First of all, the major cities that needed them already have them and Page 40 June 11,200t operating. As you take -- if you would take a map and show where these waste-to-energy facilities are, they're predominantly on the East Coast, and that's the reason there are so many facilities -- one of the reasons here is that you have water on one side, people on the other, and no rooms for landfill, so those communities responded early on in the -- in the '80s to build waste-to-energy plants. The other factor here is pure economics. Today in the East Coast, in Pennsylvania, Virginia there are mega landfills. When I say mega landfills, these are commercial landfills that are bringing trash in at ten to twelve to fifteen thousand tons per day being shipped from all places on the East Coast including New York City and even down from Massachusetts, from Canada. So these huge landfills are offering very Iow prices. So a community sometimes makes the decision, "why even bother with a disposal plant internally? Why plan? We'll just simply go out in the market. We'll take whatever the lowest cost disposal option is, and we'll just simply bid it out every so many years." And that's what we have in the last ten years or so in the United States, huge mega landfills offering prices in the 15 to $20 ton -- tons per day, dollars per ton area, and sometimes even lower simply to get customers, so that's the reason we have less landfills nowadays, one of the major reasons. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Does this have to -- it doesn't have anything to do with permits being refused? MR. RISTAU: No. What we have -- we've had is a consolidation of land -- waste-to-energy plants where the smaller ones that had to be even more stringent standards decided not to do it for economic reasons, and we've gone -- we're down to -- we're at a hundred waste-to-energy plants now. Most of those changes have been done because of the economics. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I was wondering if anyone could Page 41 June 11, 2001 challenge that? DR. CONNETT: No. I'm not going to challenge that, but I have something else to say, though. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Is -- you're saying that the smaller incinerators are economically feasible? MR. RISTAU: Not -- certainly not with the advanced air emission control technologies required. COMMISSIONER HENNING: How many tons a day are we talking, the small one? MR. RISTAU: You could go as small as 50 tons per day, and it's generally recognized small combustion facilities is -- something less than 250 tons per day is considered small. DR. CONNETT: I'd like to -- can I respond to that? I don't think Jack is quite accurate when he says they saturated the market, because if you go back into the '80s, I'm not quite sure of the date, '87, '88, they were talking then about the building of nearly 400 municipal waste incinerators in this country. The fact that they've got 102 and some of those were already operating at that time means that they have not got what they anticipated. In fact, over 300 trash incinerator proposals have been defeated since 1985 in this country, and I would like to draw your attention, I think, to the last one that was built some six or so years ago in Rollins outside Chicago. That was a Foster Wheeler plant that Mr. Stokes was talking about. That is being sold off. It's not viable and -- but I would reinforce what Mr. Ristau said that it is a question of economics, and it is very important that people understand those economics. New Jersey wanted to build 22 trash incinerators in 1985. They only got five. Now those five incinerators have an accumulated debt of 1.6 billion dollars, and they cannot pay that debt, and it's precisely the reason that Jack indicated. It's cheaper for the waste haulers to take their waste to landfills in Page 42 June 11, 2001 Pennsylvania at $45 a ton than to take it to the incinerators at $90 a ton. Now, the response of the incinerator industry is to drop their tipping fee to about $45 a ton in order to capture this waste which means they can continue to operate and continue to make electricity and continue to sell that electricity, but what they can't do now is to pay off the huge capital cost, the operating -- and those costs, as I say, are 1.6 billion dollars. And if you look around the United States, there are similar situations to that. So it's really important to look at this economically. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Can I just add that -- that in my limited bit of research so far, that even holds true in South Florida where Palm Beach, for example, has -- I think it's Palm Beach who has an incinerator that's under .- underutilized, and that's because it's cheaper to haul the garbage to Georgia than it is to burn it in the incinerator there. So we have examples of that right in our backyard. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Dr. Stokes. DR. STOKES: I would like to respond on the Foster Wheeler Plant in Robbinsville, Illinois, outside of Chicago. That's a very interesting case. Here was a fine modern plant built to separate the waste and then burn the prepared fuel. The Foster Wheeler Corporation in good faith accepted the pledge of the municipality involved or the state agency to guarantee the bonds. Halfway through the deal, they backed out on the guarantee, and Foster Wheeler had to pick up on its balance sheet the debt. Now, what I want to emphasize to you is don't go into waste. to-energy unless, one, you like it, in other words, it does what you want to do and, two, you have a good deal. If you make a poor deal going into waste-to-energy, you will regret it for the rest of your life. And there's -- as Dr. Connett has said all over the country, there are these poor deals where people have welshed, backed down, circumstances have changed. Page 43 June 11, 2001 If you go into waste-to-energy, it's got to be ironclad, that you have enough waste, you have a power contract and you have a guarantor on the plant on its performance. Now, if it costs you 50 or $60 a ton and you can ship it to Georgia for 40, you may decide to ship it to Georgia. Or you may decide that the little bit of extra cost to have a total solution in the county is a better deal. That's up to the county to decide. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Dr. Stokes, if I may ask a question. You are familiar with the power-- the waste-to-energy plant in Lee County. Would you consider that one a success? DR. STOKES: Technically, it's certainly a great success on -- on a standpoint of economics. The tipping fee is high, but at least nobody is suing anybody. They have enough waste and now they want to expand the plant because apparently they prefer more incineration to more landfill. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE.. The point being it depends on how Iow you set your standards on whether or not you consider it to be a success. Because nobody's suing anybody that makes it a winner. CHAIRMAN CARTER: I think we discussed that pretty well. I think we need to move to the next question. We have a number of them here, so I would like to keep it moving. DR. CONNETT: I'm asked the question, "Is the ashes safe as has been portrayed by Jack Ristau?" Jack, you may have heard was talking about using this in concrete and other -- other uses. I would point out that in Germany the fly ash, that's the ash that's captured in the air pollution control device, has to be sent to a hazardous waste facilities. They send them to salt mines. In other words, they are treating fly ash as serious as they treat nuclear waste. So there's no question at all that fly ash is extremely toxic. The fly ash is anything from 10 to 15 percent of your total ash. The Page 44 June 11,2001 bottom ash is less toxic. What we allow in the United States is the mixing of the fly ash and the bottom ash before it's tested. This was a complete giveaway to the industry by the -- by the EPA, and I could go into the details of that if you wanted me to. But sufficit to say that the fly ash is extremely toxic. This should not be mixed with anything, and there's very little ash at this moment that is being used in concrete or road building in this -- in this country. Now, just still on the ash issue. You notice there was a contradiction between Dr. Jones's analysis of ash and Mr. Ristau's. Now, Dr. Jones said you don't have to worry about the dioxin in the ash because it's going to be sequestered in concrete, in monofills. It's going to be all by itself. It's not going to come into contact with garbage or anything. It's there. It's going to be sequestered. And then we heard from Jack it's gonna -- it's used as landfill cover. Now, Mr. Jones -- Professor .- Dr. Jones' own calculations indicate that in the Spokane incinerator in Washington state a hundred times more dioxin is captured on the fly ash, remains on the ash than comes out of the stack. So when he did his analysis comparing the amount of dioxin that was going into the incinerator, he focused only on the -- on the dioxin that was coming out of the stack, and he then took the fly ash and conveniently said, "This is going to be sequestered in landfills, in monofills; it's not going to come into contact with the environment" and yet you hear the practice is common. I think it's common in this state to send that mixed ash and use it for daily cover on landfills where it's immediately open to the elements, to the -- to the rain, in our case -- to snow and to wind. All kinds of things can move those toxics around. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Okay. We have rebuttals from Dr. Jones and also from you, sir. Page 45 June 11,2001 MR. RISTAU: Yes. At the same time since we're on the ash issue, Michael Delate wrote a -- a question here. I would like to pick it up now because it goes right in here. "Mr. Ristau indicated that the incinerator ash may quote 'for now' be disposed at typical sanitary landfill. Does this 'for now' mean that regulations are being proposed or considered that would require the ash to be disposed of at a certified hazardous waste landfill?" First of all, no, it doesn't, and the "for now" means in my sense is that if you can beneficially use the ash, you should go ahead and do so, and for now most people are putting it in the landfill. I think there's a better option is to use it for other beneficial use which includes using it in landfills for cover material, or some states have even looked at using it for concrete or for road building materials. The fact is, this material by EPA is tested. The ash is tested and certified whether it's hazardous or not hazardous. If it's hazardous then it has to be disposed of, but today the ash is considered is being tested -- is testing non-hazardous, and that's why it can go to your landfill right along with your -- with your banana peels or be used as a cover right alongside the other materials. The material is non-hazardous; that's why it goes to your regular landfill. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Dr. Jones. DR. JONES: Yeah. I would -- I would just suggest that anybody who wants to see what this material looks like is to go out to a landfill or a -- a ash monofill and look and see what it looks like because after about two hours it sets up like concrete. I could bring a block of it and set it -- it's not going to go anywhere. I was asked the question .- again, it was a planted question - - "How much dioxin was found when the fly ash was tested and Page 46 June 11, 2001 where did the ash go in the studies I quoted"? There's a total mass balance done around the Spokane incinerator, including the bottom ash and the fly ash that were tested separately, and that ash is combined and is trucked to a secure monofill in Kittitas County in Washington. So it goes to a secure landfill. It does not go to a sanitary landfill. In fact, I think that most states now require that the -- that the ash be disposed of in a monofill or in a separate part of the landfill, not mixed with the waste. And there's tests and the literature shows that nor does the dioxin or other things leach out of this material. There's just no way it can happen. And .- so that answers that question, and should we stay on the ash issue? MR. MUDD: You have another ash question? MR. RISTAU: No, I don't. But, anyway, the answer to the question was that the ash was sampled simultaneously during the study period, and it is disposed of in a -- in an ash monofill. CHAIRMAN CARTER: If I understand, both levels are tested separately, you said, or the bottom ash and a top ash? MR. RISTAU: Bottom ash and I'd have to -- I don't recall whether we analyzed them separately or collectively, but it is disposed collectively so -- so the numbers that I pointed out was the composite concentration in .- in -- in the ash. DR. CONNETT: I'd like to just respond to Jack -- Jack's comment about the EPA testing shows that it's non-hazardous. I think this is a function of the testing. It's very, very important for people to understand that the law requires a leachate test. The law is trying to ascertain whether this material is safe to put into a regular landfill or whether it should go to a hazardous waste landfill. This is a leachate test. There is no requirement to find the absolute levels of toxic metals or dioxin in that ash to which people can be exposed. Right now in England there's a huge scandal about this ash Page 47 June 11,2001 being used on paths in alotments where the levels of dioxin in these -- near where chickens and food is grazing, 9,500 nanograms per gram. This is astronomical. That's nine times higher than the CDC's action level for soil. So the -- as far as the actual testing is concerned, which gives you this non-hazardous label, I think this is very unfortunate because there are many workers in these plants who do not recognize that if they breathe this stuff or chew their fingernails and get the ash into their system, they're getting some toxic material, especially the fine dust in these facilities. Secondly, the people are not being warned who live near landfills that this toxic material, that you should not touch it or breathe it. Now, the reason why the EPA's testing, the leachate test is giving them this non-hazardous label is rather cynical because the reason is because you now use lime in the scrubbing systems; it makes the ash very alkaline and that alkali, the lime, buffers the acid that you're adding to see what would happen if it came into contact with acid conditions over an extended period of time. Now, when the EPA determined how this thing was going to be tested, they allowed the fly ash to be tested mixed with the bottom ash. Now, why is that a giveaway? The answer is, the lime is only in the fly ash. The bottom ash is naked. It would fail in about a third of the time based upon previous tests. It would fail about a third of the time for lead which leaching with lead if you did the acid without the lime present. So the giveaway is by allowing the fly ash and the bottom ash to be mixed before the testing you take it away from the alkaline pH where water alone would lead to failure, 19 times out of 20 in Claremont, New Hampshire. But you take it down to pH which is neither acidic, where the lead would come out, nor is it now alkaline; it's somewhere in the middle. Page 48 June 11, 2001 COMMISSIONER HENNING: I have a question about that. DR. CONNETT: And so it passes -- it passes the -- the test. Therefore, the ash that the industry is anxious to protect is the ash that's produced in the largest quantity, namely, the bottom ash. And their people -- their own people said in 1986, if the ash is classified as hazardous, this is the end of the incinerator industry. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Commissioner Henning, I know you have a question, and so I'll respect your technical and academic experience in here, but I feel like I'm sitting in a discussion with mangrove experts and each one has a point of view on how to save the mangroves, so I think we've got to keep this -- you know, I'll let Dr. Jones answer-- answer back to that, but I don't want to get into a big debate tonight. You both have points. It's way beyond me how the EPA arrives at the testing centers. Commissioner Henning. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, once an ash .- you stated an ash -- it goes to an ash landfill and turns into a solid, a brick. Does it always stay that way or introducing water would turn it into a softer material? MR. RISTAU: No. It sets up almost like concrete and looks like pavement, and they've done a lot of tests in terms of doing tests in landfills with monofills like this and collecting of leachate, and they find -- they find nothing. So it sets up basically almost like concrete. COMMISSIONER HENNING: What kind of leachate testing -- what have they determined from a leachate? Is there -- MR. RISTAU: Well, rainfall passing through a landfill. Like a leachate system, they test the leachate. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Right. MR. RISTAU: And all the literature shows that there's no dioxins in that leachate. Page 49 June tl,2001 DR. JONES: And there's been extensive studies on testing the water that comes from that, and what you find basically in that water that after it comes through -- it does come in contact with that, basically salts and it's -- most cases it meets clean water drinking standards for metal. You wouldn't drink the water, but I'm saying it's not -- it's certainly a lot more preferable than, let's say, leachate from a landfill. A lot less gross and all those other things so it's basically benign. In our facility in Broward we take the water from the monofill and use it as process water. We take it and use it for quenching of ash, and we reuse it in the facility rather than discharge it. So-- CHAIRMAN CARTER: Okay. Thank you. Can we go to the next question, please? MR. MUDD: Dr. Stokes. DR. STOKES: You seldom get on these panels the kind of question you want, but I'm very lucky. I have one from a lovely lady named Michelle Krasowski which is just a wonderful question. "You state that the delay for an incinerator-based decision was to wait for money and technology. Isn't this selling the issue of environmental protection short?" The answer to the question is, yes. It is selling it short, and I apologize, Dr. Jones, for calling you Dr. Thomas. DR. JONES: Thank you, Dr. Stokes. DR. STOKES: But as we've heard here today, we're probably selling waste-to-energy short on an environmental basis because it appears to be somewhat safer than other methods. So Michelle has asked me just the most wonderful question, and she goes on to say, "You may think only of the money, but I think of my future home as a burnt out shell. I'm not looking for a deal. I'm looking for a planet to live on." Now, if Dr. -- if Dr. Connett continues, we'll all be frightened away Page 50 June 11, 2001 from this planet. Thank you. CHAIRMAN CARTER: I'm beginning to get the feeling I have an IRS case against McDonald's but, yes, sir. DR. JONES: I had a similar question from Michelle, and she said, "Please explain the point of your 15-minute presentation on dioxins when you never explained their origin and the prevention of their production, nor the damage that they may do. If they occur in combustion, then aren't they around naturally?" The answer to that question is clearly, yes. In fact, this last year when EPA was putting in its final inventory one of the major sources they identified in the springtime is forest fires, and forest fires occur in this country, of course, occur here in Florida, but in the United States they're pretty much upwind of the food bill of the United States, and one of the major mysteries is that where are the dioxins coming from that we find in chickens and beef and milk and so forth, and it sure isn't coming from the 102 waste-to-energy plants that you saw up there on the screen. It's impossible. They're not even related to each other spatially. But I will say that I think that diesel exhaust from trucks, trains, maybe even aircraft is a -- is a great source of dioxins in the environment because it's so close to the receptors. It's so close to the receptors. When you look at the fingerprints in the environmental median, dioxins have fingerprints just like our hands, as Dr. Connett pointed out, and when you look at the fingerprints in the soil and in the air and in our flesh and in our blood and so forth, they all have the same fingerprint as diesel exhaust with one rare exception and that's the production of pentachlorophenol which happen to have the same sort of fingerprint. So I contend that we'll always have dioxin in our environment as long as we have any form of combustion, whether it be the combustion of coal. I've done studies of pure Page 51 June 11,2001 wood waste combustion and there's dioxin in wood waste combustion. So it's there. It's in our food stuff. Maybe it's going to be decreasing over time. We found that there was quite a bit of dioxin from leaded fuels, automobiles. Well, now we don't have leaded fuels, so that source is pretty minimal, but it's out there. It's always going to be circulating in the environment, and the point I was trying to make is that on a mass basis we see what's in the waste, it's been measured in our waste, it's going to keep recirculating in the waste. What I tried to point out is that you're recirculating it in a much greater extent when you're composting it and putting it back in the environment. That's the only point I tried to make, and that has to be looked at. DR. CONNETT: I must respond to this. The point I was trying to make earlier is before you accept the -- the -- the calculations of Dr. Jones, you better study his track record. COMMISSIONER HENNING: I don't think we need to get into this. DR. CONNETT: No. This is very important. I'm sorry. This is very important. It -- I'm going to give you a calculation from Doctor-- incidentally, Dr. Jones' analysis on diesel and forest fires, he has presented before the EPA in the same advisory committee that I was involved in. They rejected his analysis. If you look at the EPA's inventory, they do not put diesel emissions high, nor do many other countries, nor do they put natural sources like forest fires high. So he may still want to believe that, but he hasn't convinced the EPA. Now, in 1990 -- CHAIRMAN CARTER: Excuse me, sir, what happened to yours? DR. CONNETT: What's that? CHAIRMAN CARTER: What happened to yours? DR. CONNETT: Well, I'll tell you what I presented at the same -- Page 52 June 11,2001 CHAIRMAN CARTER: No. I want to know what they accepted. DR. CONNETT: Well, I'm just about to tell you. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Okay. DR. JONES: May I interrupt? DR. CONNETT: No. No. Can I please-- DR. JONES: I want to interrupt here because what I think what's happened here -- this is not fair to the audience that we're starting the mudslinging. DR. CONNETT: I'm not slinging any mud. This is just published data, and I want to explain the published data. The published data .- this is all published. In 1990 Dr. Jones did a calculation on the total emissions as he estimated from all municipal waste incinerators in the United States, and his calculation was 379.8 grams. When we did the calculation for the emissions from just 14 of the 130 incinerators, we found over 4,000 grams. In fact, one or two incinerators put out even more than he had calculated for all the incinerators in the United States. And so now there are reasons for those kind of mistakes, but you have to hold people to their track record. He's told you that diesels are number one, forest fires, and EPA doesn't agree with him. He did these calculations on incinerators. He said 379.8 grams, here's -- here's the reference in a peer-reviewed paper that we have published. We did the calculations for just 14 incinerators; it's over 4,000 grams at that time. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: If I may ask a question? CHAIRMAN CARTER: Time out. Time out. Commissioner Coletta and then Mr. Mudd has a question. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Yeah. I have a question. I'm trying to relate to something that I have had hands on and walked through and seen. Can you relate this to the incinerator in Fort Myers? This might be a little bit easier for me to Page 53 June 11, 2001 understand than from examples from all over the country with different types of techniques. If you could relate to that, that would be a tremendous help to me. DR. CONNETT: Yes. Well, I think -- very, very good. I -- from what I understand this .- the Lee County incinerator is operating pretty well. It hasn't had the same economic catastrophe of some of the other incinerators. However, as far as the emissions are concerned, you've got to remember that dioxins are only measured once a year. The company gets about a month's notice that they're going to be monitored. They collect a sample for six hours. They do that three times, and then they send it away to a lab, and a few months later somebody will know what was coming out on that particular day. Now, two Belgian scientists, Defray and Weavers, presented in Stockholm in 1998 a test of how reliable a six-hour test was, and they did a side-by-side measurements with a six-hour collection of dioxin and a two-week collection of dioxin, and they found 30 to 50 times more dioxin calculated from the two-week test than from the six-hour test. So, unfortunately, what we're being treated to by this industry is absolutely ideal numbers, but there are many more issues beyond the .- I asked you what Lee County is doing with their ash. What they're doing with their ash. This is -- I mean, these are some of the key issues here. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: If I may ask you again. I'm still trying to get an answer to a question, and I appreciate your patience with me. I -- I don't have the background that you have in this subject, but Lee County -. the ash that's the emittance that's coming out of this particular incinerator is just about invisible, of course, to the naked eye, but obviously there's something coming out. Do you consider what's coming out of there is a great danger to the population of Lee County? DR. CONNETT: Possibly-- possibly, yes. We do not know. Page 54 June 11,2001 We know that municipal waster incineration is the largest source of dioxin. I'm not going to deny -- I'm not going to deny that they've got better over 15 years, but it's terribly expensive to get to that point, and when you've got to that point, you've got the Cafka S (phonetic} situation that having collected all these toxics in your fly ash, then the industry wants to spread it around in concrete blocks and road building. That doesn't make sense. The dioxin is on that fly ash, and Dr. Jones has indicated it's a hundred times more dioxin on the fly ash than on .- in the air emissions. So you can't have one without the other. You can't say, oh, our air emissions are great, but don't worry about what we do with the ash. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I was just approaching one part of it. Let's go to the other part, the fly ash. DR. CONNETT: Yes. Yes. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: The fly ash that Lee County is mixing in with the lime and the regular ash from the incinerator -- DR. CONNETT: Yes. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: -- and, third, depositing it in the landfill with the leach system and everything else presents a real danger to the citizens of Lee County; is that correct? DR. CONNETT: I think it's an unnecessary danger. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: But is it a real and present danger? Everything has some danger. DR. CONNETT: Well, everything has some danger, but this one is unnecessary, and it's extremely expensive. If you're going to spend a lot of money -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I'm not arguing about the expense. I'm just trying to nail down one end of it so a nontechnical person, such as myself, has a real understanding. Forgive me for using Lee County as the only example, but it's the only one I've been to and seen it, and I'm trying to get a grip on Page 55 June 11, 2001 this from that. So what you're telling me is that the emission from there by the standard that it's measured probably don't present a tremendous danger, but by other standards that they measure it where they take the emission over a week period, then they get a high reading which, of course, would be understandable when you've got something exposed to the thing over a week's time. DR. CONNETT: Oh, no. No. It's not -- sorry. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: That's why I'm repeating it back to you. DR. CONNETT: Okay. Thank you. Thank you for your doing that because -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA.. Thank you for your patience. DR. CONNETT: It's -- it's normalized. In other words, you're talking -- we're talking about concentration. The concentration with the six-hour test was .25 nanograms per cubic meter. That's a concentration. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Whatever that means. DR. CONNETT: And -- and -- it's just a concentration, how much was in a cubic meter of gas. So when they did the two-week test, they also calculated the concentration in a cubic meter of gas. The fact that the one was collected over six hours and the other one over two weeks, it wasn't -- obviously, you would get more coming out, total mass in two weeks those six hours. I'm not saying that. If you look -- if you calculate the concentration, the concentration -. the average concentration was 30 to 50 times higher than the six-hour test. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: So what you're saying is it's a cumulative effect, is that this -- DR. CONNETT: No. No. What I'm saying is that when you -- you put in a probe at six hours, you're measuring the facility under ideal conditions. We are looking at the difference between Page 56 June 11,2001 theory and practice. When you look at it in two weeks, you're looking at the possibility of upset conditions. You're looking at startup and shutdown. All of these situations are when larger quantities of dioxin are produced; that is captured in the two- week test, but it's not captured in the six-hour test. So you're -- you're getting a snapshot when you're on a videotape in terms of being able to calculate the total impact on the environment. That's all. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE.. He's basically -- I think he's saying -- see if I'm getting it that they -- they select the most profitable time for testing, and what you're saying is it's an inaccurate amount of time for testing in order to be able to get an adequate measure. DR. CONNETT: I'm not saying that it's necessarily done with chicanery. I'm just saying they get a month's notice and that the measurements are made under ideal circumstances. You get a steady state, and if something goes wrong when you're testing, they stop testing. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Oh, okay. That makes sense. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I would want to know if that's factual or not. When people start saying "we," I don't know what that means, number one. I'm not going to argue with any one of the experts here. You're all very knowledgeable. You're wonderful people, but I think we're getting some inferences in this discussion, and I would really prefer that we move on with the questions. We do understand that there may be a possibility that there is a better testing procedure, but I could go and ask the same question about the City of Philadelphia where the incinerator is in downtown Philadelphia, literally. What's going on there if it's such a problem? So I would like to move on to the other questions. Page 57 June 11,200t DR. CONNETT: Excuse me. There is no incinerator in Philadelphia. DR. STOKES: Well, there's one in Nashville, and it will do just as well. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Okay. Thank you, Dr. Stokes, for bailing me out again for Rock City. DR. JONES: There is an incinerator -- several incinerators in the suburbs. There's one in Camden, New Jersey, and there's one in Montgomery County, and there's one just south of the city, so there's three that I know of. There's three that I know of. There's three major incinerators operating in -- in the suburbs. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Well, it's a point well taken the testing is testing, and what's the criteria and what is the overall effect on the environment? What are the risks and everything because that can be sorted out I think at another forum. MR. MUDD: You want to go to -- Dr. Connett, you have the next question, sir? DR. CONNETT: Yes. Yes. Let's get on incineration for a moment. "Could you expand on creative innovations and business opportunities." That was asked by two people. Let me just run down very quickly because I don't want to take up too much time. Urban Ore in Berkeley, California, a reuse operation, been in operation for, I think, 19 years now, 21 jobs -- well-paid jobs, 1.5 million dollar gross. COMMISSIONER HENNING: What is their jobs? DR. CONNETT: They take objects like stuff that gets chucked every day at the landfill, sofas, furniture, and all kinds of appliances everything else. In some cases they repair them, in other cases they just push them back into the -- COMMISSIONER HENNING: Resorting? Sorting? DR. CONNETT: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's -- it's -- they take the reusable objects. The important message here is that Page 58 June 11,2001 recycling is high volume, Iow value. You know, lots and lots of little things, aluminum cans. But reuse is Iow volume, high value, and it's something that can be made into a business. It's something that can actually finance recycling programs if it's done voluntarily. In Gwelth, Ontario, they have an operation called Hobo Hardware which is a whole warehouse -- a whole hardware store which is completely supplied with secondhand materials. Another very exciting innovation, especially for this area where you're dealing with construction and demolition debris in a big way, is that there are now companies that specialize not in demolition but deconstruction taking buildings apart slowly recovering the materials and generating a lot of jobs in the process. COMMISSIONER HENNING.. Mr. Connett. DR. CONNETT: Yeah. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Can you give us an example of the -- how much money these people are making individually. Is it 100,000 a year? Is it $20,000 a year? What is it? DR. CONNETT: Well, that's a good question because it could be bottom-of-the-barrel stuff, but in actual fact in Urban Ore, Dan Napp, who is a former professor of sociology, is very, very concerned that people are well paid. So these people are not doing it -- they're not minimum wage. They have reasonable wages above minimum wage in -- in San Francisco -- in the San Francisco area, and they have good benefits, and that's why they held on to it so -- the proof is in the pudding. They've held onto their staff in some cases 15, 16, 17 years. So these are good jobs, and I could also point you to Recycle North in the other country -- other side of the country. Burlington in Vermont, Recycle North, they recover small appliances, large appliances, electrical goods, you know, audio video stuff. Page 59 June 11, 2001 COMMISSIONER HENNING: Can I ask it in a different way? DR. CONNETT: And computers. Let me -- please let me finish, because I think it's important. In this case they've incorporated job training. They have people being trained for six months to repair in these different sections, and they too gross three-quarters of a million, and they have got well-paid jobs. COMMISSIONER HENNING: What's their W-27 What's the figure say on the W-27 DR. CONNETT: I don't know. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. DR. CONNETT: I don't know, but I could -- I could find out. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Do we really know if these are high-paid jobs or -- DR. CONNETT: These are not crappy jobs. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It's a technical term. DR. CONNETT: They are well paid and they have benefits and they're being trained. They're being trained. I mean, some of the people being trained, they're not only training them to get the skills but they also train them job-hiring skills, how to contact, do interviews and something. So you're moving people from unemployed situations, desperate situations through the system into jobs in -- in the marketplace. It's very exciting, and I urge you to have a look at it because it is creative. It's innovative and it's the kind of stuff that would go up in smoke if you built an incinerator. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: May I -- Mr. Chairman, could I ask how many other questions we have from the audience because I know we have a lot of registered speakers waiting to speak. CHAIRMAN CARTER: We have 15 registered speakers, and I need to deal with the rest of the questions. DR. JONES: I've got -- I have just two remaining. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: For Dr. Stokes, you have any? Page 60 June 11, 2001 DR. STOKES: I have no questions. I've got the best one. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Dr. Connett, do you have more questions? DR. CONNETT: Yeah. Well, I do have two questions on the innovations, and since I've only got through a small fraction of the innovations, perhaps I could just mention two or three more quickly? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Thank you. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Very quickly. DR. CONNETT: Very quickly. In Del Norte, which is the northernmost part of California, they're taking crab shell waste and making it into contact lenses and surgical stitches. It was a horrible problem in the landfill. Here's this company called Eco Nutrients has come in and tackling it. There was a botany professor in -- in -- Berkeley, a guy called Louie Truesdell. He didn't have enough many -- enough money to set up a composting operation, but he went into the soil amendment business using his scientific skill to blend waste from forestry agriculture, and the municipality he makes over 20 different soils, and he's now got a $7 million business, grossing $7 million. This is called American Soil Products, Inc. We have other companies that are taking wooden pallets which would otherwise be crushed or burnt and making furniture and flooring out of them. So it is -- the keyword here is "value added." Recycling doesn't make money for a community. Recycling saves money on the other options, but remanufacture. If you can take those waste products and make things in this area, that's called value added, and it changes the whole economic picture. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Dr. Connett, if I may. I have a question directly related to what you're talking about, and it does sound quite interesting what you're trying to explain to us. What Page 61 June 11, 2001 kind of facility would we need? What kind of startup money would there be for something like this? Is it something you put out for bid where they come in and actually buy this product in advance? Could you tell me a little bit more? Give me details as far as the space needed, the dollars needed, and what happens to the final waste product which is the dry and the wet? DR. CONNETT: Yeah. Well, those are two separate questions. Let me do them one at a time. I think it would be important to look at the Canberra model which set this up. Their landfill looks more like an airport and then to offer out for bid the materials that you know that you're going to get source separated. If you offered them waste, I think you're going to get waste companies. That's not what you want. You want to offer the materials. Is anybody interested in this material, this material, this material, this material? I know that there are three companies in this audience right now who talked to us this afternoon who would be most anxious to get some of that source separated material for which they can take, for example -- just give you one example. They could take waste oil, you know, cooking oil from McDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and make that into bio-diesel. That's a business right there. So, I mean, I can't answer this overnight. I think the best thing to do is to find the best operations in the world and go and investigate it yourself. I told you about Halifax, Nova Scotia. They've been able to make numerous businesses and created 3,000 jobs. They are very proud of what they've done. I think they would be more than willing to send down people from the government, Department of Environment and Labor. I can get you the contact for these people. It's very exciting. It's very exciting. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Those are all excellent possibilities because I think up front you would agree, Dr. Connett, you've got Page 62 June 11,2001 to assess what's available going into your landfill. That would give you some indication of what your products conceivably could be and, therefore, you can get an idea what would work and what wouldn't work. I think that's something we already may have a pretty good handle on. DR. CONNETT: Absolutely. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you. MR. MUDD: Dr. Ozores-Hampton, I think you have one question that everybody has to answer. DR. OZORES-HAMPTON: Oh, I passed it on actually. CHAIRMAN CARTER: What a delegator. DR. OZORES-HAMPTON: I really don't have an answer for that question. MR. MUDD: Okay. DR. OZORES-HAMPTON: "What is the actual -- what is the actuarial cost of accidents over a 30-year period for each method?" And about composting, I really don't have any answer for that. I don't think there is any reported accidents in terms of composting process, somebody died, other than maybe using mechanical equipment that is related to use of mechanical equipment. But by the composting process, I don't think there is any record to indicate that. MR. MUDD: Dr. Connett. DR. CONNETT: Yeah. Just like compost, accidents happen. There have been a number of people killed in incinerators. Two people were killed in the incinerator in Pennsylvania. And I'm drawing a blank on the name of the town right now. DR. JONES: Lancaster. DR. CONNETT: Lancaster. I -- I don't think this is a real issue, quite frankly. I think accidents happen in every industrial operation. They're going to happen in incinerators. They're going to happen in landfills. They're going to happen in Page 63 June 11, 2001 composting. They're going to happen in recycling. MR. MUDD: Okay. Does anybody here disagree with that last comment? DR. JONES: The .- the point is, it's a relative risk if you're hauling waste to a local landfill versus hauling all your waste to Georgia. The statistical number of injuries and deaths are going to be much higher for the haul. That's all I was trying to make to you. It's something that's many times left out of the equation. We haul our waste in Seattle 300 miles to a landfill in Eastern Oregon, and we have train wrecks quite frequently. So it's just something that should be factored because that's a real death. It's not a hypothetical cancer death that I showed you up here. Those are real folks getting hurt or killed. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you. MR. MUDD: Sir, do you have another question in your pile? I gave you quite a few. DR. CONNETT: Yes. I have one more. CHAIRMAN CARTER: We need to take this question, and then our recorder needs a break in a minute. Do that so we can take your question and then let her have a break. DR. CONNETT: The question is, "Is a few micrograms of dioxin a health risk?" Well, the simple answer to that is if you got a few micrograms into your body, it certainly would be a health risk. We can see the difference in children in -- this was an experiment done -- a study done in Holland in 1993. It was published in the Lansett, May the 23rd, 1992, eight Dutch scientists. And what they found you could tell the difference in the activity of the thyroid gland. There was a significant difference in the activity of the thyroid gland of children, newborn babies at one week of age which could be related to the exposure of dioxin to the mother and the use of indices of exposure -- the level in mother's breast milk. The levels that they Page 64 June 11,200t looked at in the high exposure -- so-called high exposure it was about 36 parts per trillion in the fat as opposed to about 18 parts per trillion in the fat of the -- of the Iow-exposed people. So it does not take much dioxin in our bodies to cause a problem. Now, the dioxin problem as I see it -- and let me say before we get into big battle here I do believe that modern incinerators have got a great deal better at controlling dioxins, but I think by doing that they cost themselves out of the market. However, let me try to explain the dioxin problem as I see it. Number one, when the dioxin comes out of the stack, it's not what you breath. It's what enters the food chain. In one day a cow puts about as much dioxin into its body -- a free-grazing cow -- as you would get if you breathe the air for 14 years, human breathing. Or to put it another way, one quart of cow's milk would give you about 18 months -- 8 months of breathing next to that cow. So the -- while the stack dilutes, the food chains reconcentrate, cows, chickens, fish, and so on, and most of our dioxin today comes to us from food. Now, the second problem is that once the dioxin is in the body it has a very large half life. Normally we get rid of fat- soluable toxics by converting them into water-soluable derivatives, and then we can excrete them through the kidney. It doesn't work with dioxins. Instead, they accumulate in our fat. A man can't get rid of them a woman can. It's called having a baby. And so when she has a baby, then she passes onto the baby what she stored up for 20, 25, 30 years, and that's essentially -- if you read the fine print of the EPA's reassessment on dioxin which has been in the works now for ten years, that's their level of concern, that we are passing on to our babies the -- the toxic materials which are the most potent disregulators of human metabolism that we've -- we've ever studied in a laboratory that's made -- made by man. Page 65 June 11, 2001 The good news is they're coming down in the environment. The good news is there's no permanent damage here because these are not mutagens. They don't cause mutations on the DNA. That's the very, very good news, but I think it's generally agreed that we have too much dioxin right now -- right now in our food, too much in our bodies, far too much in our babies. We shouldn't be putting any more in if we can possibly avoid it. And I think that these mass-burn incinerators are one place that we can avoid it because it is not a long-term solution, and it's extremely expensive, and there are better alternatives. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Okay. We need to take five for our recorder, please. (Recess taken.) CHAIRMAN CARTER: Ladies and gentlemen -- ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please. If you would all take your seats, the panel return to the table. If you have cell phones -- you've been good. We're going to start, folks, whether you're ready or not. We're going to do it. Okay. Cell phones off, please. You've been great about it. You've been a wonderful audience. Let's keep it going. We've had some interesting debates with the panel members. They have four more questions, then we're going to public comment. Thank you. MR. MUDD: I'd ask that -- I'd ask -- first of all, I'd like to ask the panelists if they would be so kind to -- to once you're finished with your questions, try to keep those and then pass them back to me so I can get those in public record. I've been asked by the court recorder if we could collect those questions at the end so that she can -- she can make them a permanent part of the proceedings of this workshop. Mr. Ristau, you have two questions? MR. RISTAU: Yes. And they're somewhat related, so I'll read them together and answer them jointly. This is from Mark Page 66 June 11, 2001 Olson. "What assurance can you give -- give the community tip fees at a waste-to-energy plant will never increase more than CPI (Consumer Price Index) annually?" The other related question, I apologize, A..sfaha Tesfal, T-e-s-f-a-i or L, I believe. I'm sorry. I apologize. Is your company willing to build the plant with its balance sheet and then charge the county for the material disposed? If so, about how much will it cost in dollars per ton for a 500-ton-per-day waste-to-energy plant?" The two are related, and I think we can deal with them. First of all, I redo Mr. Olson's question, what assurance can you give that -- to the community that any waste processing process will never increase. And that's really what you're facing in any -- any choice you make. The anticipation of price increases always remain there. Nothing stays the same. Everything moves and changes. So no matter what technology you pick or what combination of technologies and solutions, price increases are a fact of life in more cases than not. And plus -- well, that answers that, I think, and are you willing to build a plant for $500 (sic)? In response to the consultants we were asked or posed a similar question. The fact is it's very difficult if not impossible to determine what a plant will cost today given that we don't know who's going to own the plant, where it's going to be located, what the energy pricing is -- CHAIRMAN CARTER: Your paper's on the microphone. MR. RISTAU: Oh, I apologize -- where the plant is located, what the mix of responsibilities will be between the county or this -- or the community and the plant owner. So those -- all those questions go into the analysis of the price. I think if I could step back just one point is -- is that being fiscally responsible, we all are for our own homes and businesses, when you take a look at whatever that system is, it's certainly encumbant on everyone to figure in and factor in all the costs, Page 67 June 11,2001 and clearly recycling has a cost, waste-to-energy has a cost, landfilling, all those components. If you can fairly judge it on a dollar per ton, you can see what the mix one -- one-- one component larger may affect the other component in price and ups and downs so that system -- your engineers or your consultants will help you on that processes combining the whole combination and figuring out what the cost is. But, clearly, all components will have a cost. Recycling isn't free. Waste-to-energy isn't free. Landfilling isn't free. C&D disposal isn't free. Yard waste composting isn't free. There is a real cost, a quantifiable cost if you look hard enough. Too often we see communities simply doing a hand wave and saying, "Well, if we're doing this we really don't have to" -- because it's good -- "we don't really have to judge the cost, or we don't have to worry about the cost because we're having the homeowner do it for free." Nothing is free. In order to get something out of it, you have to put something into it, and that's the precaution or the advisement that I have in this. Figure out what the whole-system cost is on a reasonable basis and include all costs, real or imaginary. MR. MUDD: Did that answer your two questions, sir? MR. RISTAU: Yes, that's the two questions. MR. MUDD: Thank you. Dr. Jones? DR. JONES: The first question was from Sheri Barnett, and she said, "Is there a difference in the dioxin measurement when a landfill is being filled with the ash from a waste-to-energy plant versus a general waste stream?" If-- if you're talking about the ash being disposed in an ash monofill, you would not anticipate having any gasey emissions, and therefore you would not have a gas collection system and, therefore, would not produce any dioxins from the combustion of that gas. What I was talking about is if you take municipal solid Page 68 June 11, 2001 waste and put it in landfill and it starts to decompose, it generates gas. Other than just methane, it generates a lot of other nasty gases, vinyl chloride measured from the surface of benzene and so forth. Now, we don't know those measurements, whether related to historic poor landfill practice or just what, but complex organic compounds can be generated in the decomposition of waste but -- so the dioxins, though, are from the combustion of that gas just like the combustion in an incinerator. So I hope this answered that question. The -- the last question came from Ken Heritage and he said, "Waste-to-energy plants have been in operation for over 30 years in Europe, America, and especially Japan. Is there any hard evidence of local health problems?" The only thing I can relate to is that there have been measurements made around facilities of cows' milk in Connecticut by the Agricultural Department in the State of Connecticut, and they have not found any increases in the -- in the milk from the control farm versus the farms near the facility. The same thing was done in -- in Maryland in Montgomery County, Maryland, where there's a new facility there, and they also traced cows' milk before and after the facility was built. More recently in the State of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg there's an older facility that's been operating there for 15 or so years which is a really high emitter of dioxins, and they are going through the process of considering the retrofit of that facility. And the state health department conducted a -- a cancer cjuster examination by looking at the census track data for cancers to look and see if whether there was any increase in cancers in the area that higher influence of the stack versus lower influence, because you can portray where the plume has the impacts on an annual basis. They -- again, I thought I was going to have some of that Page 69 June 11, 2001 data here tonight, but the epidemiologist could not furnish that, but he did write a letter to the Department of Environmental Protection in the State of Pennsylvania said they found no increases in cancers based on the census track cancer data, and there's been -- I think, there's been other studies along those lines, too, but my personal knowledge is that there's been, at least as far as the United States goes, there's been no evidence. In fact, I conducted a soil study in Norfolk, Virginia, again, near an older facility, one of the high emitters that Dr. Connett accused me of leaving out of the equation, which I didn't do. But, anyway, we made measurements of soil, and we found no evidence of any impact in the soil around that facility. In fact, most of all the high dioxin levels were found along the freeway in Norfolk, Virginia. MR. RISTAU: And just to add that since -- it's also important to note the differentiation between old facilities and new facilities. And what I believe you were referring to, Doctor, the size of the new facilities indicate no problems. What has happened -- you take a look at what may have happened in East Germany or even Eastern Europe versus -- or even Western Europe with incinerators that were running for many years, medical waste incinerators, waste energy -- trash incinerators with no emission control technologies. That certainly isn't the case here. So to compare these facilities with those older facilities is just -- just not fair and disingenuous. DR. CONNETT: I would like to respond to that. First of all, the question did say "over 30 years of operation," and the fact -- the simple fact is that over the 30 years of operation of municipal waste incinerators, these facilities have put a very large amount of dioxin, a much higher percentage than any other type of facility in the United States. There have been a number of health studies. There is an increase in cancer near municipal waste Page 70 June 11, 2001 incinerators in the U.K. Jack is correct. Many of these studies are old facilities, but you got to remember to do an epidemiological study by definition they are old facilities because you can't do an instant epidemiological study. However, increasing cancer in the U.K. Near incinerators -. a recent study published in France -- excuse me -- published in America but it was by French scientists who showed an increase in cancers which can be related specifically to dioxin. In -- previously in France they had a study which showed an increase in respiratory problems which decreased as the further you went away from the incinerator. In terms of impact on the environment, in 1989 cows' milk downwind of a large incinerator in Holland had three times the level of dioxins than cows' milk anywhere else in Holland. They didn't shut the incinerator down. Instead they told 16 dairy farmers that they couldn't sell their milk. The government took that milk, extracted the fat, and the fat was destroyed in a hazardous waste incinerator which ironically stood next to the trash incinerator and was run by the same company. That was 1989. In 1998, January of 1998, the French Government shut down three incinerators, I believe, although I'm not certain, Jack, but I do believe they were all old incinerators in Lille, France, and the levels of dioxin there was 16 parts per trillion. To put this into perspective, you cannot sell milk in France or Germany above five parts per trillion, which, incidentally, means you cannot sell human breast milk even if you wanted to on the open market. I -- I think the other interesting thing which bears underlining is Ireland has the lowest levels of dioxin in Europe and possibly in the world. It averages .23 parts per trillion. That's something like four times lower than the German goal. The German goal is to get cows' milk level down to less than .9 points per trillion. The difference between Ireland and the U.K. which averages ten Page 71 June 11, 2001 times higher than Ireland, one of the big differences is that Ireland has never run trash incinerators. So there's quite a bit of evidence, if you look for it, that incinerators have impacted the environment, have impacted the food chain, and have impacted human health. But I agree -- I agree that the modern incinerators with this enormous amount of money spent on them has reduced these risks considerably. MR. MUDD: Sir, you have the last question. I think I gave it to you just a little while ago. DR. CONNETT: Okay. "What do -- do or do you know the most dangerous ]ob in America is?" I used to imagine being president. No, seriously. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: County commissioner might be up there. DR. CONNETT: Yeah, but the most dangerous ]ob -- someone said tax collector behind me. MR. MUDD: Sir, I think-- I think we're -- DR. CONNETT: I am stumped. I mean, I think mining. I think uranium mining must be right up there. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Steeple jack. DR. CONNETT: Steeple jack, yeah. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Probably the lumber industry. MR. MUDD: We -- Commissioners, do you have any questions directly? They've answered all the ones from the audience. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I have one. MR. MUDD: Yes, ma'am. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I wanted to ask Dr. Stokes a question because my -- you started out your remarks by saying, "Whatever you do," if I understood you correctly, "don't sort of jigsaw puzzle a solution to your waste problem. Get one big solution if you possibly can." And if I understood that right, it troubles me because it sounds to me like certainly composting is Page 72 June 11, 2001 a part of the solution, certainly recycling is part of the solution, hopefully, reuse and some of these creative ideas for how to reuse -- reuse what would otherwise be garbage is a part of the solution. And I have such a respect for your opinion, I wanted to know if I heard that right and if I did if you could make me understand why several puzzle pieces is not the best answer to the problem. DR. STOKES: Well, you heard it right, but did not understand it right. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Good. DR. STOKES: Recycling is a piece, and we already have it. We could keep it or let it go. I note a problem with that, but what I'm saying is when you take the next bite you want to take a big bite. For example, I didn't go into this, but I was a representative for many years with the Bedminster Composting Company as their consultant and sales representative. I gave it up because I was so unimpressed with their performance in building plants. And I particularly followed the Cobb County plant all through -- I've been in every one of their plants, and I have a son that's trying to build a plant in Gettysburg. He's a county commissioner too, COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: God bless him. DR. STOKES: He's weak-minded, see. Now, it would be possible to build here this county a 800-ton-a-day composting plant, and that would give you essentially a total solution because on the front end you would take some things out and recycle them, and the compost would go to ag people, and as this charming lady says, we really need the compost. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yes. DR. STOKES: This is an ideal place to make it. And so that would be a big piece, and that's what I want you to do is take a big bite, not a whole lot of little ones. Page 73 June 11, 2001 COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Okay. I appreciate that. Thank you. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Could I -- could I just add to that just a little bit. I heard a presentation yesterday which -- but it had little pieces, and I thought it was very, very interesting because they dealt with major problems such as composting and the C&D material and grease and waste-to-energy. I mean, they had many different components, each one in itself would, I guess, be self-sustaining as well. And I -- I just thought it was a rather good idea, and so I don't think we should rule anything out. DR. STOKES: It is a good idea until you start trying to put them together as enterprise businesses and manage them and have them not lose money and not fail to work right. In theory it's an awfully good idea. The problem is in the details, and our solid waste department is probably busy already, and if you start laying more and more enterprises on them to run efficiently and to not lose money, it's kind of hard. DR. CONNETT: Can I -- I think that the key thing here is, if you ask the question what to do with waste. If you make that first mistake of mixing everything, there is no magic machine. I mean, there are a lot of people selling us magic machines, but in my view there is no magic machine. If you separate, then you can be rational. You -- you -- you should ask questions like, what do we do with the paper? What do with do with the cardboard? What do we do with tires? What do we do with this? What do we do with that? It seems to me that those are all rational questions, and if you can -- I disagree, I think, with Dr. -- Mr. Stokes here because I think it is the art of cobbling together the small enterprises that can make businesses and handle individual materials where they've got good quality control on them. Page 74 June 11,2001 I mean, for example, you refer to the Bedminster operation. One of the things that always concerned me about the Bedminster facility is that they insisted that they could take raw waste. They said, "Don't bother the citizens. Send us your trash in plastic bags. We will shred it and compost it." To me that compost is never going to be usable. So just getting that right to make sure that you source separate the organics and then use elegant composting operations and then, yes, if a company can take waste oil, vegetable oil, and convert it to bio- diesel, that's a great little operation. And, yes, you may have to take a little bit of a gamble. Some of these companies might -- might go under. Some of them won't, but the alternative of putting all your eggs into the waste corporation's basket to me is -- would be a fatal mistake. However, the big problem is it means work for you guys. It's work for you guys. If someone comes along tomorrow and says, "We've got the machine for you. We'll build it over here. You just send us the trash at $70 a ton or whatever" is very tempting. There's no work for you. You might get a lot of criticism, but it's no work. Whereas what I'm talking about is a lot of work. You've got to deploy your staff like George here and others into running down these. What do you do with this material? What do you do with that material? Where can we get a business to do this? This is a lot of work. It isn't easy. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Excuse me. Thank you, sir, and Dr. Hampton, you had a comment. DR. OZORES-HAMPTON: I just wanted to add many people mentioned a bed municipal bio conversion. I worked for them for many years. They have a plant in Tennessee and another in Atlanta, and they have the problem that most compost facilities have the problem, which is they concentrate in waste disposal, and they don't produce a product. Page 75 June 11, 2001 COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Right. DR. OZORES-HAMPTON: So they don't have a product to sell, therefore, they fail so -- DR. STOKES: You're a hundred percent correct. DR. OZORES-HAMPTON: Yeah -- thank you. If you concentrate on what your customers need and you create a product, then you will sell it. CHAIRMAN CARTER: To pursue that just a moment, whether you use composting at the end, whether you use energy conversion at the end, if you have what I'm going to refer to as what I understand a Murf (phonetic) operation up front, does all the separation of materials, addresses what Dr. Connett is saying that you have -- you have potential industries that can use that material. You have a way to get that out of the mainstream including, I would say, electronic waste which I think is a big issue, and then you have ways to deal with this. So it would seem, if I'm tracking this conversation, that if at the end you have done a good ]ob of separating out, then it becomes a question of what do you do. MR. RISTAU: Just be advised that you're into the commodity of market when you're breaking out materials, and commodity of markets go, as we all know, up and they can go down. You -- also in the issue of selling the commodity means you have to -- you have to produce a product of this specific specification for somebody to use it. And the second, the other element, you have to produce it in quantities and third -- fourth, probably at this point, you have to be close to your location or users of it. If there is transportation costs, those costs have to be factored in. So you're running into all those issues that have to be balanced as Doctor -- I believe, Dr. Stokes said. Balancing all those at any different point at any time is that a system that you want to build a county's solid waste plant on versus something that it's a little Page 76 June 11,2001 more manageable and you're dealing with more proven technologies or more proven companies that have a track record and maybe even in dealing in commodities, but a proven track record. DR. STOKES: Now, the best place to see a pilot operation of composting is Sumter County. I have been working with Terry Hurst up there for years. I was up at his plant the other day sweating with him on how to get glass out of the compost so we could have a product to sell. If he can get the glass out, he can sell every pound of it. There's enough golf courses in Collier County alone to take all the compost you could make from 800 tons a day. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Absolutely. DR. STOKES: And that doesn't count the onion growers and the petunias and everything else. So you can see this up at Sumter County a microcosm of it. Go take a look at it. MR. RISTAU: With that product, you, the producer has to warranty the product and is subject to liability. DR. STOKES: It has to be approved. MR. RISTAU: If you're the producer, you have to stand behind your product, pluses and minuses. CHAIRMAN CARTER: It can be done. DR. CONNETT: Could I answer this question, too, because I think in terms of could we guarantee today that a hundred percent of everything that was separated would have an instant market, the answer is no. Communities cannot recycle everything. There's a lot of junk coming at us which is bad industrial design. That's the long-term -- the long term. The 21st century, 20 years from now to address that, but I urge you to look at Halifax, Nova Scotia, where in six years they're getting 65 percent of this diverted, created a lot of small businesses in the process, and 3,000 jobs. So I'm -- I'm going to go there shortly Page 77 June 11, 2001 with a video camera, so we'll see who gets there first. CHAIRMAN CARTER: I'm sorry. Commissioner Coletta, you also had a question. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I appreciate it. I wasn't volunteering to go to Nova Scotia, even though I think some people would like me to, but if I may take us in a little different direction. I would like to talk to you about waste-to-energy, and I've been doing quite a bit of my own research on that, and I don't claim to be the experts that you gentlemen are. But there's a couple of issues that I'm concerned about. One, would our waste stream produce enough that we could have a waste-to-energy plant that would be self-sustaining and have a break-even point? Number two, I know that you -- you have a cost for transmission. That's unbelievable for the small amount -- small producer and I heard about us becoming an authority and everything, but I also understand that the government subsidy for this sunsets in about a year and a half. How's this going to affect the whole picture as far as waste-to-energy goes? MR. RISTAU: First of all, on the first question regarding quantity, just looking at the county data, 25 percent and 21 percent -- 25 percent of the total 160,000 tons is C&D waste. Twenty-one percent is yard trimmings. So if those two materials were processed or composted, you'd be already up to 46 percent of your total waste stream being dealt with, and the balance there certainly would still be room, I would think, for some paper recycling and some metals and possibly some plastics, and the rest could be combusted. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: And would that be enough to sustain a plant? MR. RISTAU: Yes. If you could look at that, you're probably down into about 500 to 600 tons per day remaining waste stream after recycling, and that's after very aggressive recycling after Page 78 June 11, 2001 you take out the C&D and yard -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: How would we be affected when the government sunsets subsidy? MR. RISTAU: I'm not sure I understand. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I understand that there's a subsidy for producing electricity by this. MR. RISTAU: What we're all going to be witnessing here in -- in -- in stages that go to deregulation you're going to be in a position of selling power to the grid at whatever the power price is, so the plant will always be in a position to sell power. The question is at what price will it be selling at any given time. You'll see it and we've been tracking the data here in Florida in the southeast. Unfortunately, you will see the increasing of electricity prices here in the Southeast, not to the degree you're seeing in California. DR. STOKES: What roughly is it now? MR. RISTAU: Well, voided cost right now is selling electricity to the grid at three and a half cents -- 3 cents, 3.1 cents, and it will rise over the next 10, 15 years depending on how deregulation occurs here. The comment I heard about selling electricity, the real advantage that you may have in this state when it goes to deregulation is going to hold the power to yourself, offset your retail. For example, the county's paying a big electric bill here, street lighting, any of your public buildings. You pay public retail buildings, not three cents, but probably seven or eight cents. Under deregulated market in certain cases you would be able to make power from your own plant and offset seven or eight cents for electricity prices, meaning a tremendous amount of savings by generating your own power and selling it to yourself so you wouldn't be out there selling at the lowest rate. You'd be offsetting -- offsetting your retail price. COMMISSIONER COI. ETTA: You still haven't answered the Page 79 June 11, 2001 question about the break-even point. Is there a break-even point? MR. RISTAU: I'm not sure I understood the question. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: In other words, the cost to -- to go to setting up a generator transmission lines and the whole business, that cost there in addition to the incineration -- MR. RISTAU: I got your question. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: -- that produces the heat, where would the cost break-even point? Is it there? Is it reasonably there? MR. RISTAU: There's two revenue sources to waste-to- energy; that is electricity and disposal fees. Electricity prices will never pay for the cost of capital and operations. So when you add up that, you put the equation costs and revenues you slide -- you take your costs you minus your electric revenues and whatever that's left over is your disposal fee. So -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I understand your answer to that, but I haven't got an answer to my question. My question is, would it cost to put in a generator to put in the transmission lines? The income that you get just from the electricity, how long before it would pay that -- the facility itself, that part of the facility, the generator part of the facility? Is there a break-even point or not a break-even point? MR. RISTAU: I don't think you have the option to build an incinerator or a waste-to-energy plant. The waste-to-energy plant is designed to be a -- to control the emissions as well as produce electricity. I don't -- you don't have the option of building just an incinerator. That's why there aren't any incinerators in the United States, because if you had just an incinerator, the cost of the air emission control devices are prohibitive. In fact, that's why the incinerator -- to a large degree a lot of these old incinerators of the '50s shut down because Page 80 June 11, 2001 when emission requirements were upgraded those incinerators couldn't do that. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: So you're saying that there is a cost-relation benefit. So you just don't know how many years it would be. MR. RISTAU: There is a real benefit to having waste-to- energy because -- see if I can make this clear. When the -- because you're cooling the gases, because you're taking the heat out of the gases, you reduce the volume of air that has to be cleaned, and that makes it more economical to build a waste-to- energy plant than an -- than an incinerator. So if you had 500 tons a day, whatever it is, you want to incinerate or do a waste-to- energy plant, it would always be cheaper to build a waste-to- energy plant. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Commissioner Carter, if it will be at all possible since this particular subject is before us, we have in the audience a gentleman that is an expert on this particular subject, Jack Pointer. I was wondering if we might call him up as the first speaker. CHAIRMAN CARTER: He has the right to be here. Is he on the speaking file tonight? He is a person who had FPL do an analysis on our energy for the State of Florida for the next 20 years. That report will be put in the public record tomorrow at the board meeting. Whether or not he -- if Mr. Pointer is still here and he would choose to speak for five minutes, if he wants to try to address that, we would incorporate that into the public comments. MR. OLLIFF: Mr. Chairman, I'm going to make a recommendation here. It's almost 9:00 and you do have 15 registered speakers. If you want to go ahead to the speakers and get Mr. Pointer up there first to answer maybe that one particular question and then head straight to your public Page 81 June 11,2001 speakers, that would probably be a good way to move this meeting along. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you, sir. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Jack Pointer is here, and he is willing to speak. DR. CONNETT: Could I add just a point of discussion while Jack is walking up here. I think one of the important things in -- in making a decision like this is to be wary of the analysis which says, "Recycling would take this much, composting would take this much, there's this stuff left over, and that's the percentage that we got to build an incinerator." That's an integration, if you look, in space. I think more inportantly is what you should say to the Commissioners with all due respect is, "What should we do first?" And I think the common sense says you got plenty of places that are looking for your waste right now, lots of places. There are incinerators in Broward County that are way short of trash. You've got five years, at least five years to get everything that everybody agrees with, recycling and composting, reuse, repair, all those nice things to get those up to the -- the most, the best in the area, if you like, and then when you've done that look at what's left over and then revisit the incinerator. If you go with the incinerator first, you tie up this capital for 25, 30 years. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Dr. Connett, we haven't made up our minds. I think we owe it to our constituents out there to have all the answers to all the questions, and that's what why I wanted Mr. Pointer to emphasize on this one point. CHAIRMAN CARTER: In the essence of everybody's time this evening, Mr. Pointer, would you answer that question, please. MR. POINTER: Dr. Carter, thank you very much. My name's Jack Pointer. I live in North Naples, and I have just Page 82 June 11, 2001 been doing a little bit of work on an incinerator and the incinerator-to-energy situation. I'll give you a figure of $150 million to build a incinerator. That particular incinerator will take care of the waste that is in this particular county. The amount of waste that is in this particular county is capable of generating about 40 megawatts of electricity, so to the 150 million you would have to add about a million and a half per megawatt to install or $60 million, so a total of a incinerator plus the waste-to- energy generating plant would be another 60 million. About $210 million would get you on the line, and that would keep you going as far as burning the amount of -- of waste and generating electricity. Of the 40 megawatts of electricity that you would generate, 4 megawatts would be necessary to run the plant. So you would have about 36 megawatts left that can be sold on the market. The amount of money that it's going to take that $60 million to put up the electric generating station is going to have to take an operating cost per year with the people, with the maintenance, with everything that's involved in there, you've got to take a figure somewhere in the range of 20 percent of that or about 12 -- or about $24 million per year is going to be the fixed charges of owning that plus operating it. Somebody had to give $60 million one way or the other. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And that's -- that comes to the issue that Dr. Connett was saying about, you know, set aside for a moment the environmental issues and evaluate this economically, and it's an absurd concept for our county. It's an absurd -- CHAIRMAN CARTER: If may be popular at this moment, but I would want to see a complete economic analysis before I would make any decision on anything, and I appreciate Mr. Pointer's input tonight. I think it's very valuable, but I am not -- this Page 83 June 11, 2001 commissioner is not going to look at bits and pieces. I am going to look at a big picture. I value every person who has been here tonight and spoken, and I'm going to kind of wind this up. But, Dr. Connett, if there's any way that you feel that I have treated you unfairly tonight, I would apologize, sir. DR. CONNETT: No, I -- I -- CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you. Because I respect you, and I do enjoy debating with you, and I would like to do that in some other forum probably just one on one. I enjoy that and everyone that's been here that's debated. I know Dr. Jones and you have debated. Sometimes maybe folks don't really understand that when we kind of go at each other on this stuff it's not personal. It is that we have some criteria we're trying to get established. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Jack, are you finished? Oh, I'm so sorry. CHAIRMAN CARTER: So I'm just saying I thank all of you. And, Jack, is there anything else you want to add? MR. POINTER: I just want to add on that in a year there is just short 9,000 hours in each year or 8,760 hours in a year, and so each megawatt is capable of giving you about 9,000 megawatt hours per year. A figure somewhere in the range of around $30 a megawatt hour is about right that you can get from the market today. We're going to find in the State of Florida, that is, in the southern part of Florida, that the Florida Power and Light has adequate supplies of energy for now and for the next 10 or 15 years, very much so. They are not going to pay a premium for electricity. They'll pay what it cost them probably in the range of $30. So this is a long and deep and thoughtful thing that has to be done, but all of those numbers that I just began to give you have to be thought through and have to be a fact, not just off the top of my head. Dr. Carter, thank you very much, sir. Page 84 June 11, 2001 CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you. MR. MUDD: Mr. Chairman, this concludes the panel discussion. Okay. And at this juncture I'd like to thank the panelists for coming here tonight and being part of this -- being part of this educational process for the public and for the Commission. Your time is very valuable, and I understand that, and I think it's appreciated by everybody in this room, and I would like to thank you very much, and if you could please loin me with a round of applause. (Applause.) MR. MUDD: Mr. Chairman, about public comments, that normally goes back to the Chairman of the Board of County Commissioners. We have 13 speakers. The first is Mildred Haylock or Haylode (phonetic). Is she -- is she here? CHAIRMAN CARTER: And as we do this, Mr. Mudd, I would like to take all our public comment, but I think each one needs to make the statements, we appreciate that, put it on the public record but not engage in debate with any one of the panelists or the commissioners at this point. Thank you. MR. MUDD: Is Mildred here? The next -- the next speaker is Gary Burrows -- Burris, excuse me. MR. BURRIS: Over here. Which side do you want? MR. OLLIFF: Jim, if you'll go ahead and call them out two at a time, we can get the next person ready. MR. BURRIS: I'm Gary Burris, and I'm with the Green Model Project. My ]ob for a long time is to put the pieces of the puzzle together to make your ]ob as commissioners easy so you can take care of the needs of these people. In this room are companies willing to bring you 30 to 40 megawatts of energy, to take all your waste and turn it into usable compost that's clean that's being used all over the world, to take your wood waste and gasify that in a nontoxic Page 85 June 11,2001 process elimination. Just forget the dioxin debate. That's wagging the wheel crap. We're talking about the space shuttle here. And it will cost you not one thin dime. These people are ready to pay you for the rights to capture that gas from the landfill and use it, so why even consider this technology when the space shuttle -- when technology that can basically -- I don't think it will save the world, but it's a step in the right direction, and the coming out of a Republican White House this is remarkable and it was probably what Mr. Bush didn't want to here. But they finally are saying that we've got a global warming problem, that in the last 15 years, 10 of the hottest years on record have already passed, and it's getting hotter and hotter. And they say here, this is quite clear, the primary source of fossil fuel burning and has released roughly as much carbon dioxide as would be required to account for the observed increase in the temperature. What that says to me -- after over 20 years as an activist that I've done many Ph.D. type studies with my work. I've made a lot of films. To make a film correctly you've got to get into the data. What that says is the heating is going to double, the global -- the melt down of the poles is going to at least double, it's going to increase in velocity of how it's happening to us, and it's real. And we stand a chance if we release any more carbon dioxide unnecessarily of eradicating all mammal life on this planet and -- and this is not some idle statement from somebody that hasn't been there who hasn't seen the data, who hasn't studied it. I've interviewed the top scientists in the world, and it's troubling in that there are people I can see, like I say, sitting over there who are willing to come here, and I think it was in the paper today I made a challenge. Why don't you build a little incinerator on one side of the landfill; let us build our project over here. Let's both hire the Page 86 June 11, 2001 best scientist to check emissions, and then let's swap scientists, to keep us honest, and then at the end of the year he who has depleted the environment get the hell out, and let the people who are here to genuinely try to clean up this planet, and the people in this room I feel are -- are -- environmentally conscious to the extreme. Why would you put your life in developing technology that's better for mankind if you didn't somewhere down inside believe you're doing the right thing. And there's a lot more companies out there. I made it my life's work for the last few years to -- to go out, find out who they are, look at their technology, check their data, check it with scientists, check it with the EPA. And the people in this room tonight represent something that this county would be very, very proud of, and your soil conditions would improve. You would have energy and when the big hurricane comes and sweating with the mosquitoes, you can put the light on. And it's a very good idea for this county to become a municipal authority and have your own energy source, and I would at this point -- moment petition the county to take back management of the landfill. Let's put it on an even playing field and deprivatize it, so we don't have to put up with this one- minded crap with one ma]or company out here trying to keep -- to get their stock market price back up. Thank you very much. MR. MUDD: Mr. Wimer withdrew. Next to the podium is Edith Williams followed by Mark Olson. MS. WILLIAMS: I was in this room 15 years ago when we were considering the same thing. Well, we were really almost signed up. In fact, I think we were partly signed for the resource recovery plant. We defeated it. I've had 15 years of clean air to breathe and, let's see, I think it was Dr. Jones said, an old plant -- and he mentioned an old plant as being 15 years old. Well, that's what we would have Page 87 June 11, 2001 had, a 15-year-old plant here. And, furthermore, when we were trying to defeat it, the men were here, and they were in the process of putting in the Palm Beach one, and so I -- they here -- they were proposing, our Commissioners at that time, were proposing that this was the latest thing there was, and I knew it wasn't because I knew what Palm Beach was putting in. I knew what we were going to get. So I asked the men who were here that were going to build the plant over there or were in the process of building it, they said what we were going to get was not as up to date as was Palm Beach. We wouldn't have had what Palm Beach had. We would have had dirtier air. I think it was just wonderful -- just wonderful to me to hear Dr. Connett and Dr. Hampton a whole new way of going. Just wonderful. You could run with it, and I'm all for that, and the county must have feelings that way too, the county commissioners, because about a year or so ago they gave us all a great big bin that we could compost in. Gave it to us. All this how to build it and everything. Well, anyway, I'm opposed to this. It's extremely expensive comparatively. Emissions pollute the air, and the ash is unacceptable, and I would like to go the other way. MR. MUDD: Mark Olson followed by Mr. Bob Krasowski. MR. OLSON: Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the board. My name is Mark Olson. I reside at 1019 Broad Avenue North in the City of Naples. For eight years I served as chief operating officer and member of the board of directors for Micro Lite USA, Inc. Micro Lite provided consulting services and turnkey solutions within the following areas: Municipal solid waste material recovery facilities, recycling programs public and private, waste composition studies, ground water contamination abatement and treatment systems, compost facility design and operation, post consumer commodity marketing and distribution, Page 88 June 11, 2001 direct permit and regulatory negotiations, economic modeling and cost benefit analysis, direct budgeting, financing, staffing, training, and implementation, contract negotiations public and private, competitive analysis of MSW disposal methods, landfill versus incineration versus recovery and composting. I've attended over 300 public meetings concerning design, site selection, permitting of solid waste facility. I'm a former local elected planning board member in Massachusetts. My most notable achievement while working for Micro Lite was designing and implementing and operating a portable 300-ton- per-day material recovery facility in Atlanta, Georgia, and a 200,000 square foot compost site in Conyers, Georgia. The facility was contracted by the 1996 Atlanta committee for the Olympic Games, AGCOG, and received all mixed waste from the sporting venues for recycling and composting. Official numbers published by AGCOG showed an 82 percent diversion rate from landfill, an Olympic first. I believe it's reasonable to state I have some knowledge of solid waste issues. Collier County is not the first nor the last to face waste disposal issues. The irony is many of the steps taken and that this commission will take have been taken by other communities and often with disastrous result. I'm reminded of an example in Dakota County where a five-member county commission -- this is Dakota County, Minnesota, by the way -- five-member county commission voted three to two to design and construct an incinerator. The decision prompted uproar within the community. Over two years a three-to-two majority spent $50 million designing and permitting the facility. Within that two- year time frame, two fresh candidates for the county commission ran on a "stop the incinerator" platform, were elected on that single issue. As a consequence the project was scrapped, and the only thing to go up in smoke was 50 million taxpayer dollars. Page 89 June 11, 2001 Based on my expert opinion, however, and speaking as a taxpayer, I can't help but assume that the decision has already been made in Collier County, at least somewhat to go ahead with an incinerator. I support this assumption with the fact that Malcolm Pirnie has a reputation in my industry for promoting incineration as a primary source of disposal. I don't think that's an objective review. In dollars and cents actually the public wants to know one thing. What's it going to cost? In dollars and cents it's reasonable to conclude that -- that eighty-five to hundred dollar tip fees would accompany a waste-to-energy plant. They could go higher. It depends. I asked the question on whether or not the guarantee could be made that it wouldn't go beyond annual increases above the CPI. I think my answer was, "Well, I can't guarantee that." Recently I've taken it upon myself to find a better deal for Collier County. Using my contacts in the solid waste industry, I know at least one firm that's willing to come to Collier County and enter into serious negotiations to build a 2,000-ton-per-day material recovery compost facility. All costs for this facility would be privately funded. That means not a penny coming from the taxpayers. However, like any operation and relationship there are, of course, two requirements that would have to come from the county. The first is they would have to sign a minimum ten-year contract to send all the waste in the county to this facility. The second requirement on the county would be that they would have to provide some location, and this could be arranged through say a 99-year lease for $1 a year. And there's all sorts of creative ways of doing that. For these two commitments, this is what the benefit is: 100 to 150 jobs in the county with a liveable wage and a health benefit, recycling and composting consumer marketing of over 80 percent, a 30-plus year solution to the county's waste Page 90 June 11, 2001 disposal issue, virtually no adverse environmental impact, tip fee of $59 plus or minus per ton not to increase annually by inflation. As a taxpayer and resident of Collier County, I encourage this commission to take this offer seriously or any other which meets this criteria, because I certainly believe this approach is environmentally friendly, common sense, and is the only way that we can truly be in charge of our future relative to solid waste issues. Thank you. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you. Next speaker, please. MR. MUDD: Bob Krasowski followed by Ben Krasowski. MR. BOB KRASOWSKI: Good evening and hello commissioners, hello public. I found tonight's meeting very interesting. A lot of information passed about, but I can't help but notice how we have three representatives, paid representatives activity for the waste industry here to the one Dr. Connett. Several months ago when I petitioned the county to have another workshop after they had their workshop on the top of the landfill in December of 2000, after a couple of occassions asked them to do this, to do this, they said they would. And initially there was the understanding that it would be Dr. Connett here to balance the bias, the bias that Malcolm Pirnie had presented in their various expensive $400,000 worth of reports they provided to the county but -- and it was understood that Malcolm Pirnie would have a chemist here to balance out a discussion, make a rational discussion with Dr. Connett. But as you see here tonight, the primary representation here are these three gentlemen, one on pyrolysis of fluidized bed, Dr. Stokes, who I might add according to what Ms. Edith Williams said earlier was the gentleman who was initially the person promoting incineration in 1985. He stated earlier that he doesn't have a dog in this fight or he doesn't have an interest, but Dr. Page 91 June 11,2001 Stokes hand carried the incineration proposal from Foster Wheeler and delivered it to the county for consideration. As I understand, Foster Wheeler did not do that themselves. Dr. Stokes is also promoting pyrolysis, another one of the six finalists in the narrowed-down field by Malcolm Pirnie. These other two gentlemen I understand from previously talking to Dr. Connett were in Guam when he was discussing incineration and waste alternative. I don't know why we should call incineration the alternative and these other methods as the primary -- for primary consideration. We sit here tonight looking for a solution to our landfill problem, and what we actually have here is a wasted time by dealing with these waste-to-energy people. There's a group of men over here that represent various interests that was mentioned by Mr. Burris, and I'm not endorsing anyone, but maybe tonight I'll lean towards that because I've had the benefit of listening to their presentation, and I've had the benefit of hearing Dr. Connett's questions of them in regards to the impact of their various methods. We should get these men up here and get rid of these incinerator guys. $200 million and $150 million is obscene. Okay. To bring these gentlemen who will just take your tipping fee and work on the problem is where we should be going. Now, you know, as a child I was given a good lesson. I was told that if anyone were ever to catch -- capture a Leprechaun you could force the Leprechaun to tell you where it's gold was, and there was a gentleman who actually captured a Leprechaun, and then the Leprechaun had to agree to tell him where he got the gold. Leprechauns steal a lot of gold. You can get out of people's pockets, off of the desks, and stuff like that, and they accumulate pots of it. So they -- the Leprechaun had to surrender the location of the gold. This gentleman took his scarf Page 92 June 11, 2001 off, wrapped it around a tree, and then made the Leprechaun promise not to remove the scarf while he went to get a shovel. Well, the guy went to get a shovel to dig up the gold, and when he got back to the forest there were scarves -- there was a scarf around every tree. So he couldn't locate it. That's what happened here tonight. You've got Dr. Connett here to balance the bias. He could speak for an hour on himself or beyond that on these various issues and be very informative to our population. Instead the situation was created where you have Dr. Connett, 15 minutes, 45 minutes. Fifteen-minute presentation, three guys pro incineration for forty-five minutes. How many questions? We have a question and answer. He gets a pile of questions. They get three piles of questions, and they're all proposing the same thing. This is outrageous. This is the beginning, I hope, and not the end. Commissioners, I think you asked some excellent questions though most of you, obviously, some commissioners are still promoting and pushing along with Dr. Stokes incineration, and I could go into detail about that at a later time. But any of you that want to hear more about this issue from Dr. Connett are invited to the Golden Gate Community Center tomorrow night where at 7:07 right after Jazzercise Dr. Connett will give a complete presentation not under the -- hassle of timeliness and then also not under the debate with these incinerator guys. And if you guys want to come, too, that's fine, but the floor will be occupied by Dr. Connett. There's is much more I could say. I've got the minute signal from -- from Mr. Mudd, and I just hope, Commissioners, that this -- this is the beginning. We've listened to other people, other options. It's absurd what's going on here. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Bob -- Bob, before you go anyplace, I think you need to say one other thing. Has this Page 93 June 11, 2001 process been open to you fully and openly where you were made -- you were made privy to every piece of information that came down? We seeked (sic) your advise continuously. We haven't shut out one inch of the way. Mention that now, Bob. Give us a little credit, Bob. We bent way over backwards to make sure this was totally fair. MR. BOB KRASOWSKI: Commissioner Coletta, I think it's inappropriate for you to -- to bring this up. I have not attacked you. I've complimented you on the questions. I have involved myself as a citizen, no cost to the county. I am not reimbursed for this stuff. I've worked over a long period of time. Now, I'm not isolating myself as being unusual in this regard. I know you, before you became a commissioner, did much of this yourself. Everybody sitting here has contributed time. But what I'm saying is that myself, people like Dr. Connett, are not paid by anyone to do this stuff. I'd like to know who arranged for these three gentlemen, probably -- how many of you were brought here by Malcolm Pirnie? Okay. And yourself, sir, you're on your own waste-to- energy. And, Dr. Stokes, are you paid anything for this at all? I know you live here. DR. STOKES: I hope to get a cup of coffee from Jim Parnell. MR. BOB KRASOWSKI: And last time you didn't get paid anything, but you got $11,000 in expenses, wasn't that the case, in '85? DR. STOKES: What's that? MR. KRASOWSKI: In 1985--well, I'm beyond my time. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Irrelevant. MR. MUDD: Ben, you have the podium next followed by Jan Krasowski. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Could I -- could I just ask the county manager, would it be possible to get a videotape of that Page 94 June 11, 2001 presentation tomorrow evening that we could replay on Channel 54? CHAIRMAN CARTER: You could probably get taped presentation to be WGF Frank Kidman tomorrow morning at 7:30 a.m. And I believe 5:30 with Mr. Rich King on WINK WNOJ, as I understand it. So I think it's great. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I would very much like to have the Golden Gate event recorded and replayed on Channel 54. COMMISSIONER HENNING: I think that's one side. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: One side of information would be good for people to have. COMMISSIONER HENNING: No, you need a balance, Commissioner, as we need in all of it, and that's what we're trying to do. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But couldn't we -- COMMISSIONER HENNING: This is played tonight; right? This is recorded tonight? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Sure. We're live but also if we could record that, if you want to run a thing underneath it that says this is one side of the equation and other people's opinions differ from this gentleman's and the county doesn't endorse this position but, you know, let people be educated. MS. WILLIAMS: I think so because -- CHAIRMAN CARTER: Excuse me. We've got a number of speakers. (Multiple speakers from the audience.) MS. WILLIAMS: He had -- he had -- they got three lawyers against one. That's what we got here. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Was there -- could we possibly -- CHAIRMAN CARTER: I think we'll reserve that for discussion at the board meeting tomorrow morning, Commissioner. It's getting late. Page 95 June 11,2001 COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Okay. MR. MUDD: Ben, how you doing? MR. BEN KRASOWSKI: I'm doing good. Hello Commissioners and Members of the Committee. I'm Ben Krasowski as you might have heard. I am up here right now because I've heard that the commissioners are considering -- well, not just commissioners, the people -- just basically Collier County has been considering building an incinerator, and it's come up that the commissioners, some of the commissioners were considering using a 50-year plan for the paying of the incinerator, the planning, and no alterations, and so on. I think that's ridiculous 'cause I'm 14 now, and by the time I will be old enough to use my plans and use my ideas, I'll be 64, and no offense, you guys will be long gone. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Never know. MR. BEN KRASOWSKI: Anyways, this just leaves me to be paying for this incinerator all through my life until I'm 64. And also leaves me -- you all know I'm pretty smart, so all my ideas to go to waste so until I'm 64, of course. So I'll leave you with that and thank you. MR. MUDD: The next speaker is Jan Krasowski followed by John Villella. MS. KRASOWSKI: Good evening. Thank you for -- as well for having a solid waste workshop, but I too was very disappointed to find that your workshop panel to be stacked to give waste-to- energy a majority of the voice here this evening. The incinerator industry doesn't get it. Your well-paid, short-sighted consultant Malcolm Pirnie doesn't get it. You're all fiscally conservative Republican elected officials, I hope you can get it. A 30 to 50 years solid waste plan is not fiscally or socially responsible. First of all, solid waste is not a renewable resource. If we continue to treat what we throw away as something to Page 96 June 11,2001 stick in a landfill or burn instead of something to be recycled or reused and given back for future generations to use again, we're missing the whole point. And this is especially for you, Commissioner Coletta, we don't want to selfishly deplete our earth's resources by feeding a waste-to-energy plant that depends upon our disposing of our resources to operate. The closest, earliest option is the only responsible method that is fiscally and socially responsible. I just have a few other comments here. That was my main thing. An incinerator can only be sighted as a power plant. It can't be sighted as an incinerator in the State of Florida. An incinerator, it's expensive. I mean, homeowners cannot afford an increase in trash collection fees. And this is a concern of the tens of thousands of households -- and I've got to turn my notes over -- who are already strained to the limit just meeting day-to- day living expenses especially when our trash collection bills are added to our property tax bills and you can take our property if we don't pay our property taxes. There are other -- there are other contaminants produced during trash incineration besides dioxin which are of even greater concern and especially to our children. These are heavy metals and most notably they are mercury and lead. You are fiscally-conscious Republicans elected to watch our expenditures, please get it. Thank you. MR. MUDD: Out next speaker is John Villella ' followed by Tracy Harris. MR. VII. LELLA: My name is John Villella, manager of business development for Detroit Edison subsidiary. That's the 7th largest utility-- MR. MUDD: Speak into the mike. MR. VILLELLA: The situation in our business is developing landfill gas-to-energy projects. When I first came in contact with Page 97 June 11,2001 Collier County, became aware of your problem, it was an odor problem, and clearly what's happening here is a case of landfill gas escaping from the landfill, and there's been, I think~ nine extensions on trying to correct that problem. And our particular position is we build large landfill gas projects. We have one running in Orlando here. We're taking -- the project is designed for 8 million cubic feet a day, and what we do is we take that gas from the landfill, we send it to the Stanton Power Station. It's a 900 megawatt utility plant in Orlando. So two things are happening out of this. Number one, the greenhouse gas is disappearing from the environment. Number two, you've got less particulates and emissions going up into the atmosphere, and bottom line is the EPA says this is the equivalent of taking 187,000 cars out of the road, 187,000 off the road. We do this all over the country. It's a situation where we're not asking you for $210 million and $24 million in operating expenses. We pay you. Okay? We pay royalties on gas extraction rights all over the country. I've got 26 of these things running, 3 in Florida. Okay? And then the problem became more of a comprehensive solution. So I began to think, well, supposing we could reduce vehicle fuel emissions, diesel fuel emissions in this county, and I began to say, well, we could connect a bio-diesel production facility to the landfill, use the landfill gas-to-energy to run that. And I went up recently to investigate how these things operate, and you're talking about producing a million gallons a year of alternate fuel under EPAC which is enough to treat on a 80/20 blend. Talking about treating five million gallons of diesel fuel. In this particular county, we could run your school buses off of it. We could run your diesel fleets off of it, and now we're into a comprehensive solution. And so what I decided -- we've decided to do is to put Page 98 June 11, 2001 together a couple of companies who are cutting edge in these types of things and see if we could mitigate some other problems. Okay? Air quality problems, municipal solid waste problems, and so essentially what I'm saying to you is that we build these things on our dime. Okay? We're not asking you for anything. All right? So it's an entirely different situation. So right now you're flaring gas out there at the rate of 2.8 million cubic feet a day on average. It's your tax dollars going up in the air that can be put to use. So between the three of us here, we're looking at 30 megawatts worth of power which can be generated off of just what you're throwing away and mitigate or do our -- make our best attempt at mitigating the odor problem here which apparently has been going on for quite some time. So how do we proceed at this point? I mean, what I think the best thing to do is you want to know specifically -- I hear a Commissioner here, he wants to have a complete economic analysis. Put an RFP out on the street, and I'll give you to the penny what the economic analysis will do, and these two other guys over here will also, and they're making investments, so we need an RFP, we'll show you exactly what we plan to do. You can look at it. We'll answer questions. If you don't like it, you don't have to take it. It's just that simple. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Could you tell everybody what company you were with? MR. VILLELLA: Yes, I did. MR. KRASOWSKI: We didn't hear you. MR. MUDD: John Villella is from DTE Biomass Energy. MR. VILLELLA: Yes. It's an affiliate of Detroit Edison. Okay. We go into these projects on an all-cash basis. We just put the money up. We don't -- we don't finance anything. We don't go through any lender, due diligence. We just build it. That's all. No brainer. Page 99 June 11, 2001 MR. MUDD: The next speaker is Tracy Harris followed by Bill Fowler. MS. HARRIS: Hey guys. You're going to like me. I'm not going to take the full five minutes. We are actually one of those tiny little pieces of the puzzle that can add up to something really big. It's -- we're -- we have a new system we just recently brought to the area. It's a cooking oil management system for restaurants. Right now they're dealing with a lot of extra waste and trash with gibs of oil that are stored in plastic and then boxes of cardboard wrapped around that. We put in a system that brings it to them in bulk so it's two tanks, one holds fresh oil, one holds waste oil. Right now their waste oil is picked up, often spilled into the sewer system. I understand there's been a little bit of a problem with that around here. So this keeps happening -- happening because there isn't anything that can be spilled. It's a completely closed loop system, but it also, of course, adds to eliminating having all those waste oil trucks going to pick up all the waste oil because now they're coming to our plant. We have a full system in an area -- we're looking at about 1.5 million pounds of waste oil picked up from us per month. Imagine all the trucks running around town going to all the restaurants picking that up, so we're eliminating that happening. Plus we're eliminating about 700,000 cubic feet of waste no longer being dumped into the dumpsters. Plus we're also eliminating the -- the sewer issues. I grew up in San Diego County where we always had problems with water shortages, so what's going on down here is kind of nothing new for me. I take a short shower, by the way, but -- COMMISSIONER HENNING: I take a group shower. MS. HARRIS: There you go. Well, I just got back from St. Johns. Down there all the showers hold four people, so I Page 100 June 11, 2001 understand. CHAIRMAN CARTER: You may have found your direction. MS. HARRIS: But in San Diego one of the things they did was they came up with a -- a little bit of a tax benefit for anybody who put in the toilets that use less water. Maybe there's something we can do as far as restaurants that look for ways -- solutions to or businesses look for solutions to lower waste. Thank you very much. (Unidentified speaker from the audience which could not be heard.) CHAIRMAN CARTER: We have to have everybody on a mike that speaks, and we cannot have dialogue, Commissioner, with anybody in the audience. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I would like to repeat that for the record. The gentleman -- what was your name? Gary Burris said she's here as a part of their proposal that her company would gather the oil that then would be used to produce the bio-diesel. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you. MR. MUDD: The next speaker will be Bill Fowler followed by Asfaha Tesfai. I hope I got it close. MR. FOWLER: I will be quick despite the graphics that will help me go faster. COMMISSIONER HENNING: You have five minutes, sir. MR. FOWLER: I will use it. Ready. Go. I represent Canada Composting, Inc. Actually, I represent the U.S. Arm of Canada Composting, Inc., which we call CCI. We have the largest anaerobic digestion facility for the processing of municipal solid waste in North America. See if this works. I don't know if this is going to work or not. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Move closer to the mike. MR. FOWLER: Somebody hit the light? DR. CONNETT-' Use this microphone over here. Is that Page 101 June 11, 2001 working? MR. MUDD: George, hit the button, the forward button. MR. FOWLER: Arrow to the right. Hit the arrow. DR. OZORES-HAMPTON: You have to escape first. MR. FOWLER: Get out of that one. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Tell you, we got a table full of PhDs and they can't even run a computer. MR. FOWLER: So what do we do? We divert the organic solid waste from landfilling just as the good doctor of composting was talking about earlier. There's a very large percentage of your solid waste stream. I use the number 60 percent. That's the number that EPA gives out for the average in the U.S. I would imagine Collier County is fairly similar to that, but not only do we compost the waste, we recover energy from the waste. We are throwing away energy when we throw organic waste in the landfill. We are also creating problems for the environment. We have the methane problem, which we've heard about earlier, and there's well- documented problems with landfills impacting ground water. Next slide, please. What we do is we take the waste, we clean it up. We take out the contaminants so we don't need a pure organic waste. We like it as clean as we can get, but we take out the contaminants which are mainly metal, plastic, and glass. We then put it in a vessel, a big tank, if you will, and we let the bugs go to work on it in an anaerobic environment, that means without air, and those bugs produce methane. Next slide, please. So the opportunity - this has been already touched on. These are very round numbers. I don't have the exact numbers for Collier County, but you guys are very close rapidly approaching 500,000 tons per year of solid waste. Of this, that 50 to 60 percent -- let's call it 250 to 300,000 tons is organic. If we could capture all of that -- and I don't believe -- we Page 102 June 11,200t cannot -- certainly not tomorrow, but we can make a good crack at starting that, we could power enough power for 10,000 homes, and what comes out the back end is compost. That compost is needed down here in these soils. We can produce about a hundred thousand tons per year of high nutrient compost. Next, please. Just so people don't go, well, this has not been proven anywhere, that's our plant. It's up in Canada. You can come see it tomorrow. That's December. That's December. It's a little nicer there now. Next slide, please. 180,000 tons per year. This plant we process about 150,000 to The next comment we always get is, it's too expensive. You know, it's going to be this, it's going to be that. Well, if you bring a ton of waste to me tomorrow, I will charge -- if it's clean organics, I will charge you about 30 bucks. And if you bring me waste that has contaminants in it, forks and knives and bones and stones and all this stuff that ends up in people's dumpsters, that will be about 45 bucks. So we are very competitive. Landfilling in the United States is very cheap. Twenty bucks right now, we can't compete with that. I would be the first one to say I can't compete with 20 bucks, but when I'm talking about an incinerator at eighty-five to a hundred dollars, guess what? I can compete with that. Five megawatts power from that plant, it's about 5,000 homes and about 50,000 tons per year of compost. Next. What do we take? We take food waste, first and foremost that's what we want. Along with food waste you get a lot of fiber waste and paper waste, and along with that you get cardboard and packaging. We can also go to specialty items like food processing waste, for example, tomato processing and melon processing and pepper processing. We can take yard waste. That's not our primary goal. Yard Page 103 June 11,2001 waste we feel is better handled aerobically. It's cheaper. It can be done quickly. Thank you. And also deal with removal of exotics, and my cohort will talk more about that. Next slide, please. So this is what people say composters can handle because there's bags mixed into it. There's all this stuff that comes out of a restaurant's dumpster, and that's our tipping floor in Canada. We process it every day. Next slide, please. How do we do that? We make a pulp, spin it up. Next slide. We pull out the contaminants, that's the glass and metal. Next slide. We pull out the plastic. Next slide. And we make the compost. Next slide. And we make the power. Next slide. So what do we do? We provide you with the whole enchilada. I'm not asking you for $150-200 million. I will do this on my nickel. What I need from you is a commitment to provide the waste. I can't come down here -- I can't get financing from a bank to put in an investment here unless they know I have some waste to work with. We will do the whole thing. Finance it, design the plant, build the plant, and do the operations. Next. What are the benefits? Divert waste from landfilling at a reasonable cost. I think we could do 30 to 50 percent diversion. That's a modest goal in probably the next three years with no money from the public. Provide the green power I talked about. We can provide the compost for the soil amendment. We can offset other emissions, bank greenhouse gas credits. We can pass those along to the county. MR. MUDD: Bill, you need to wrap it up. MR. FOWLER: Okay. Thank you. Demonstrate that the county and city are committed to sustainable practices. Thank you very much. MR. MUDD: Mr. Tesfai is the next speaker followed by John Basic, Sr., and John is our last speaker. Page 104 June 11, 2001 MR. TESFAI.' My name is Asfaha Tesfai. You were close. I'm with a company called Future Energy Resources Corporation. It's an Atlanta company that's basically formed to commercialize technologies developed by DOE. The company and the government has spent about $50 million over the last ten years basically to develop this technology. What is the technology? It's an advanced biomass gasification process. It's a form of technology proven over 20,000 hours in a 10-ton-a-day plant. Following that we built a 500-ton-a-day plant which is in Burlington, Vermont. If you know Vermont, to build something in Vermont it has to be very clean. We have a 500-ton-a-day operating in downtown Burlington, Vermont. It's flexible, can handle various kinds of biomass. It produces a gas that's really substitued for natural gas. This gas will go to generate power in power plants. It can go in to process plants basically to process heat. It can also go into fuel cells to produce electricity at very high efficiencies. For those sites that are here, basically the process is a very unique process. It basically separates the gasification and combustion, and fuel comes in a gasifier. As soon as the biomass heats, the gasifier, components are driven out. The part that's left passes into a combuster where it's used to generate the heat, and this can be separated between these two chambers. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Could I ask a question? Would you toll his time for just a minute. I wanted to understand this. What produces -- what's the trigger to cause this to happen? I mean, she has worms and he has something else. MR. TESFAI: Basically, heat. You have to heat up the sand. When you start the process, heat it up with natural gas. One, its sand is hot and circulating and add the biomass. After that you cut the natural gas and use biomass to drive the process as well Page 105 June 11, 2001 to produce your product, gas. We pull this gas at about 500 BTUs in heat content so it can displace natural gas in many applications. The plant we have in Vermont is here. There was a plant that was designed to handle a hundred tons of dry contents. We operated it as high as 350 tons. It's a small plant, so it can be put in a very compact place. And currently we are looking at several projects, about ten projects, to deploy this technology. We would like to propose this type of project structure where we don't ask any money from the county. What we would like to do is get a long-term contract with the county or with the city, and then we will put the money ourselves and operate the plant jointly, either with the county or with other counties. So there is no money needed from the county to put money in. We will put the money. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: How much land do you need? MR. TESFAI: Most of the land that would be needed is for storing the feedstock. This plant that's in Vermont is sitting in a 40 by 30 plot, so the reactor that's processing this much material is 40 centimeters in size. This is wood, yes. DR. JONES: That's not municipal waste? MR. TESFAI: No. This is not municipal waste. But we have over 20,000 hours in a smaller plant that we're going to use. Really, what we're going to put together is Detroit Edison, and the others we'll take them the wood portion of that material and gasify it, and then the organic portion will go into composting. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I see. MR. TESFAI: Again, a broad range of biomass could be used efficiently. Wood -- wood usages with gas, municipal solid waste, urban wood waste, residue, pepper wood waste as well. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You're standing in front of your slide, sir. You might want to move. Page 106 June 11,2001 MR. TESFAI.' One minute, sir. Okay. Let's see. Some of the applications we're looking for, these processes include repowering steam boilers for steam and power, replace natural gas in industrial use. Use it as landfill supplement where other processes are already in place. In Oregon, which has heating -- very similar heating plant in the infrastructure in place. In terms of power generation conducent in distributing power generation. In gas turbines and lC engines we have the vendor General Electric as well as -- that indicated they would give same performance as natural gas if we use our gas in these turbins -- natural gas biological gas turbin instead of having standard turbin and the soluable oxide -- and fuel cell and replace incineration or landfill. Really what we have here is a technology that's -- where everyone thinks about waste-to-energy, they think of ncineration. This is another way to use waste to generate energy without incinerating. Thank you. MR. MUDD: Our next speaker is John Basic, Sr. MR. BASIC: Thank you, Commissioners, for hearing me and also the panel. You have had a very interesting evening. I come from a small part of incineration. My name is John M. Basic, Sr. I'm a mechanical engineering graduate of Illinois Institute of Technology. I'm a veteran of World War II with action in the Pacific on Okinawa for electronic training in radar and sonar. I'm a Florida resident living on Marco Ireland. At 77 years of age I'm still active licensing the basic technology in different parts of the world. My office is on Marco Ireland. I have current patents on the state of the art of combustion of waste fuels. The United States Patent Office granted me several patents since 1984 with the latest ones granted in 1995. They granted me a total of 873 patent claims of design and method. The same patents are currently held in 33 industrialized countries. Page 107 June 11, 2001 I have been actively in the business of waste energy combustion business for the past 32 years. I was personally active in the business of designing, building, installing more than 80 systems in the USA. Additional systems with licensees were built, installed in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Japan, China, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, and Thailand with Mexico and Canada also, which brings a total to more than 125 installed basic technology systems. Each of these systems met the air pollution laws an all installations. We currently have two systems operating in two different hospitals here in Florida. For those who wish more of my background, I refer you to my internet web page called basic-energy, com. You'll get 25 pages of information there. For those interested in background in modern combustion, you can reach me at my e- mail, which is jmbasic@aol.com. I'm an associate member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Research Committee and Industrial and Municipal Waste. I have been both an active and associate member for 18 years. I believe in using all forms of waste processing that are economically sound. This includes prevention, recycling, composting, combustion, and eventually landfills. I started in the business of combustion in 1969. This was at a time when many incineration systems had many pollution emission faults. This spurred me in the development of new steps in obtaining clean combustion. Many persons that may be against combustion as a solution have not kept up with the modern developments made by certain companies. Therefore, do not tag the entire field with a wrong that may be still committed by certain waste companies. Be specific in your judgments. Economics of a solution is the long-term key. My developments in combustion were made in the intermediate- sized area. The largest model burns approximately 200 tons per Page 108 June 11, 2001 day. When more is needed, we add units in parallel. Our size also allows a municipality to divide and locate different zones within the municipality. Travel and handling costs are also a cost in time and money. Hours can be saved by not needing to send everything in one place. My present task provides me with a world perspective. I know that through my basic technology and licensees that the prefabricated unitized construction of a basic design can be built and installed at much lower prices than prices quoted in the newspaper this weekend. Therefore, the long-term costs with energy recovery would be much less in dollars per ton of waste. In about a month from now I'll be going to Nanhi, China, to visit the facility that will be a 400-ton-a-day plant with two systems side by side in Nanhi, China. And I know that through that -- through that source and our licensee here in the United States you will be surprised what the costs may be. I also -- a system in Japan which burns hazardous waste and goes to a landfill that is lust ash in terraces, a very modern land ash landfill. I can help you in any way. I'm over here in Marco Ireland. I'm not selling hardware. I'm selling a system of thinking. I'm open to any kind of questions that you guys face at me, MR. MUDD: Mr. Chairman, that was our last speaker. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Okay. Thank you very much, panel. Again, members of the board, this was an information session tonight and with public input so we can get a wide variety of possibilities and deal with the longer-term solution. I think where we are we have bought the time to comfortably sit back, relax, absorb all of this, and initiate a direction that will take us to what I call a longer-term solution. But the young gentleman that spoke said he didn't want my 50-year solution. That is only a conceptual framework in which you can operate and need to Page 109 June 11,2001 go. It does not imply that one's sole source would be good for 50 years, because in this modern world of technological development, that will never happen. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Commissioner, if I could just say this is a perfect segue to announce that tomorrow we are considering the hauling contract for Waste Management and, you know, we'll be looking at how we're going to provide that flexibility long term, and since we have the captive audience of people here who are interested in garbage, I just thought I'd use the opportunity to announce tomorrow's the day. CHAIRMAN CARTER: I think we have put together a way so that we can sit back and relax and do what we need today so it gives us the time to go to the future. We have made major headway with this board and over, I would say, the last 12 to 16 months I think we have moved mountains, if you please, to get where we are this evening. So I am proud of the board. I'm proud of the people that are here. I'm proud of our staff, and I thank all the people who were in the audience for their patience in dealing -- and being ladies and gentlemen tonight dealing with ladies and gentlemen. It is a hallmark for Collier County versus what I have witnessed and seen in the past. We all -- we all should be patting ourselves on the back as we leave this room tonight. Remember we may have differences, but we're all here to share and find the best solutions for Collier County. Thank you. God bless. Have a great evening. Back here in less than 12 hours. There being no further business for the good of the County, Page110 June 11, 2001 the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 10 p.m. BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS/EX OFFICIO GOVERNING BOARD(S) OF SPECIAL DISTRICTS UNDER ITS ./DWIGHT E,i~BROCK, CLERK : TheSe minutes approved by the Board on ~- 3 I- ~ I presented ~ or as corrected . CHAIRMAN , as TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF DONOVAN COURT REPORTING, INC., BY CAROLYN J. FORD, COURT REPORTER Page 111