Shamefully, the waste-to-energy plant at Harrisburg, PA was supposed to undergo a renovation which would increase its incineration capacity from about 200 tons per day to 800 tons per day, and its electricity output from 8 megawatts to 24 megawatts. The upgrade, which was undertaken by Barlow Projects, was botched and stopped in 2006. One of the three ovens is completely incapable of operating, and the other two are not 100% stable. The concerns being thrown around are how much money it will cost the city to get the facility up to speed.
This is a serious blemish on the future of waste-to-energy in Central Pennsylvania. There will be little incentive to build a waste-to-energy facility based upon what happened in Harrisburg. Even a brand new facility with the latest technology from the start would be hard to get through. Some people here do not even pay to have their waste collected at curbside for disposal in the landfill let alone having it incinerated in a tightly-controlled energy-from-waste facility. Instead, trash is smoldered, converted into micron-size airborne particles at pizza-oven temperatures in rusty 55-gallon oil drums scattered around backyards throughout the region, and I don't think the smoking ban applies to this kind of smoking.
The two working burners at Harrisburg are currently being operated by Covanta.
In many European countries such as Denmark, municipal governments handle all aspects of waste management and that includes the construction and operation of incineration plants. The system seems to work very well and offer an environmentally-sound and inexpensive option for the treatment of non-recyclable solid waste and production of energy. Denmark's biggest incineration plant, Vestforbraending, combusts 700,000 Mg of waste per year and heats the national capital (Copenhagen). However, Americans must not be ready for it yet.
Of course, the mainstream news media seems to be more interested in giving us the scoop on President Bush's colonoscopy (and for the 3 days afterwards) and the latest Paris Hilton trash than what is going on at the incinerator. So maybe no will ever know about this!
