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SANDY — The city of Sandy wants to revolutionize the way it recycles and manages garbage. A private company proposes to open the first waste-to-energy facility in the U.S. It heats trash into methane, which is then burned for power.
Navitus Sustainable Industries plans to lease land from Sandy to build their plant in the public works yard.
The company will bring in 350 tons of garbage a day, recycle 30% of it, then turn most of the rest into gas that will be turned into electricity.
If it works, the first waste-to-energy plant in the U.S. could change the way all communities manage garbage. CEO of Navitus, Heidi Thorn, is confident.
"We're doing the recycling, the sorting, and the power generation and disposal essentially all under one roof,” Thorn said.
Sandy will see immediate benefits: total recycling, better air quality, money saving, electricity creation, job creation and eliminating the need for landfill.
Under the Navitus plan, homeowners throw everything into one trash bin — no sorting of recyclables, then it all goes to the plant.
"We are able to use state of the art recycling and sorting equipment to sort out all of the recyclables. Then everything else we use to generate natural gas and electricity,” said Thorn.
The remaining garbage will be used to generate electricity.
"We will put it through a conversion process where it takes it from a solid, and converts it into gas, a methane gas,” Thorn added.
Trucks that currently go to the recycling center and landfills would no longer drive those roads, savings in emissions and transportation costs.
We have a birthright to breathe clean air, and you're selling that birthright. And that's why were here today, because you want our approval to do that.
–Quentin Lawton, Sandy resident
An evaluation by the Division of Air Quality shows that emissions from the plant do not present a public hazard. But Dr. Brian Moench, President of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, believes that the plant is an incinerator and needs to be judged that way.
"We do not feel like the state agency has done their job in making sure this is actually as benign a facility as they claim,” Dr. Moench said. “We think the evidence is that it's not benign at all.”
He also believes the state is sending a bad message on air quality.
“We are going to take stericycle out of the Wasatch Front air shed, we're going to ask you all not to burn wood at night. And you shouldn't, but we're going to permit a facility that is essentially a return to incinerator in missions to this valley."
There was also plenty of skepticism at a public hearing Thursday night as critics said the proposal is a health hazard and won't work.
But at a DEQ public hearing, opponents voiced their doubts about the technology, their concerns about emissions from the plant and their skepticism that the state was doing its job protecting the environment.
"We have a birthright to breathe clean air, and you're selling that birthright. And that's why were here today, because you want our approval to do that,” said Sandy resident, Quentin Lawton.
Unless something arises during the public comment period that ends February 4th, Navitus will be given a permit to operate.
