Sludge Watch ==> Hamilton approves sludge incinerator plan

[Maureen Reilly]

City OKs sludge incinerator plan

But council asks staff to study costs of using privately financed plant 
instead
August 09, 2007
Eric McGuinness
The Hamilton Spectator
(Aug 9, 2007)

Hamilton councillors are going ahead with a plan to build a $60-million 
sewage sludge incinerator, but want to know before it's built whether it 
would make more sense to use a sludge-burning power plant proposed by 
Liberty Energy Inc.

As one observer noted, "The only thing people in east Hamilton want less 
than one new incinerator is two."

The city incinerator would be built at the main sewage treatment plant at 
the north end of Woodward Avenue. Liberty wants to put its plant on 
Strathearne Avenue north of Burlington Street East.

Ward 5 Councillor Chad Collins cast the only vote against the plan, citing 
concern for the city's image, tarnished by the poor performance of the SWARU 
garbage incinerator shut down five years ago.

While he said it would be unfair to compare the old trash-burner with a 
modern sludge incinerator, Collins said, "We're on a slippery slope in terms 
of hanging our hat on an incinerator."

Mayor Fred Eisenberger called the plan for a clean-burning incinerator that 
will take many trucks off the road "a very progressive step rather than a 
negative image issue."

Jim Harnum, senior director of water and wastewater, argued incineration is 
also cheaper than the present practice of spreading sludge on farmland, 
which he said is threatened by lack of available land and concern about 
toxic metals, pathogens and pharmaceutical residue in municipal sludge.

Dundas Councillor Russ Powers said, "I have no problem with incineration, 
but it has to be state of the art. There can't be gravitation back to what 
we experienced with SWARU.

But he insisted staff find out what it would cost to use the privately 
financed Liberty plant, which is re-starting its environmental screening 
process after two years of study because of a rule change by the Environment 
Ministry.

Councillor Dave Mitchell, who represents Glanbrook and rural Stoney Creek, 
said winning approval for a city plant "gives us a negotiating tool with 
Liberty Energy to maybe make them sharpen their pencil."

Ancaster Councillor Lloyd Ferguson also noted, "We're not 100 per cent sure 
Liberty Energy will get approval, so we have to have a backup plan."

Now that council has given the go-ahead, the city plan will be posted on the 
province's Environmental Bill of Rights Internet registry for a 30-day 
public comment period.

...........................

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August 09, 2007
The Hamilton Spectator
(Aug 9, 2007)

City officials proposing to burn sewage sludge label the process "thermal 
reduction" rather than incineration to distance themselves from dirty, old 
incinerators such as Hamilton's garbage burner known as SWARU.

Jim Harnum, senior director of water and wastewater, yesterday compared 
SWARU and the city's old open-hearth sludge incinerator with simple firepits 
in which waste was dumped and burned. They produced both heavy bottom ash 
and fine fly ash.

The process proposed by Harnum, and also by Liberty Energy Inc. for its 
power plant fuelled by sludge and waste wood, uses a more modern 
fluidized-bed system, sometimes called gasification.

First a bed of sand is heated by natural gas to about 800 C, then the fuel 
(in this case sludge) is fed in above the bed. The fuel vaporizes almost 
instantly and the resulting gas burns off. Once burning starts, no more 
natural gas is needed and no bottom ash is produced.

Stack emissions are filtered to trap fly ash and treated to remove harmful 
substances.

http://www.thespec.com/article/231548