March 19, 2006
RALEIGH – It’s time for New Hanover County to close the only municipal solid waste incinerator left in the state. That’s the key finding in a new John Locke Foundation Regional Brief.
New technologies and competition are better at efficiently extending the life of landfills, writes JLF fiscal policy analyst Joseph Coletti.
New Hanover County’s waste-to-energy incinerator (WASTEC) was built in 1984 to extend the life of the county landfill and also to make money from selling the energy it generated. But Coletti shows the incinerator was never able to make money. It relies instead on subsidies from the landfill. To make the subsidies work, the county raised tipping fees.
“The incinerator was expected to eliminate solid waste tipping fees,” Coletti said. “Instead, the county used taxpayers’ money to subsidize the incinerator, and only in the last three years has the county been able to raise tipping fees enough to make the entire solid waste system break even.”
Now 22 years old, WASTEC has operated as the state’s only municipal solid waste incinerator for nearly a decade. Coletti said that five private landfills may open in the state, including one in nearby Columbus County, which could offer landfill space to New Hanover County at competitive rates. The new landfills would also likely force down tipping fees. Only in the last three years has New Hanover’s waste management system stopped losing money, thanks in large part to its $46 per ton tipping fee implemented in 2003.
“New competition will put more pressure on New Hanover’s combination of a landfill offset by an incinerator,” Coletti said. “Instead of insisting on keeping this combination, county officials could allow the new site to help ease the burden on their landfill.”
While other municipalities opened incinerators around the time New Hanover County did, theirs have long since closed, leaving only New Hanover’s. “Incinerators make sense in Europe and Japan, where land is scarce,” Coletti said. “In North Carolina, however, land is relatively abundant.”
Coletti added that other communities already cross county lines to deal with garbage. “All but six of the 100 counties in North Carolina ship some or all of their municipal solid waste out of county.”
Coletti said that New Hanover officials should take advantage of the numerous ways available now to expand the life of a landfill. Those include increased use of the Posi-Shell Cover System, which greatly reduces the amount of daily cover that landfills need. New Hanover could also recycle leachate liquid in the landfill to speed decomposition. The latter also presents the opportunity to collect and sell the methane gas it would produce.
“New Hanover has nothing to lose from closing its solid waste incinerator now,” Coletti said.
Joseph Coletti’s Regional Brief, “Money to Burn: New Hanover County’s WASTEC Incinerator,” is available at the Locke Foundation’s website. For more information, please contact Joseph Coletti at 919-828-3876 or [email protected]. To arrange an interview, contact JLF communications director Mitch Kokai at (919) 306-8736 or [email protected].