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Don’t know where talk about turning Greensboro’s White Street into an incinerator are —–hopefully they’re nowhere. But it’s interesting to see that the Winston-Salem City Council heard the incinerator pitch yesterday:
A Winston-Salem entrepreneur wants to turn Winston-Salem’s trash into gas.
Tyrone Holmes is proposing that the city stop using landfills and start putting waste into a $400 million plant he wants to build somewhere within the city limits.
The promise of the plant is that it would heat trash at high temperatures, then quickly cool it, creating gas that could be sold to energy companies. Other byproducts of the process would be metal alloys that also could be sold, and water that would go back into the city’s water system.
There are a few catches, though. The technology has not been used anywhere in the United States, and Holmes would have to make deals with a significant number of other municipalities to bring their trash to the plant to make it profitable.
Interesting that two different “entrepreneurs” pitch turning landfills into incinerators to two different cities, isn’t it? Which brings me to the sideline discussion spun off Greensboro City Council member Danny Thompson’s effort to filter porn at the city’s public libraries. I’m not too involved in that discussion, because it’s one of those issues —like public prayer —- that just go around and around, although I personally don’t understand defending the right to view porn in public libraries.
I did take note, however, of the sideline debate over at Ed Cone’s over the apparent “war on city staff.” Yes, I have also wondered about the Rhino’s relentless bashing of Greensboro’s city staff. By the same token, I agree with Antiplanner— interviewed in today’s CJ—– that “urban planners don’t really understand urban economies very well, and so they follow fads” —— Smart Growth, mixed-use development, streetcars, etc.
“Entrepreneurs” know this, and are eager to make money off a city all to willing to spend money that’s not theirs on the latest “fad.” The good news is the W-S city council actually seems skeptical about burning its garbage.
