October 19, 2024 10:25 pm
• Last Updated: October 19, 2024 10:25 pm
Lisbon ― There were about 2.5 tons of garbage in the grip of a giant claw when crane operator Phil Whitworth on Saturday slung the load into a hopper as part of a process designed to turn the hulking mass of refuse into electricity and ash.
Roughly a dozen people looked on in awe as they gathered around Whitworth in the tight control room overlooking a mountain of trash rising 90 feet from the pit floor of the WIN Waste Innovations waste-to-energy plant. They were there for one of several tours scheduled as part of The Last Green Valley’s Walktober 2024.
Whitworth, peering intently through the window, guided the claw using joysticks on either side of his swivel chair. When he wasn’t feeding the hopper, he was breaking up and mixing the debris so it would burn better once inside the furnace that reaches temperatures in excess of 2,500 degrees.
The furnace heats a boiler that produces steam to power turbines generating enough electricity for more than 13,000 homes.
Tour guide and Plant Manager John Horgan said the trash comes into the facility on 80 to 100 trucks per day. It leaves on roughly six ash trailers headed for a landfill in Putnam owned by the same company.
“The benefit of waste-to-energy over landfilling is that, first of all, we recover energy from the trash,” he said. “But we also reduce the volume of the trash by 90%.”
Horgan described a switch from landfills that began in the 1980s when state officials prioritized the construction of waste-to-energy incinerators over the roughly 144 municipal dumps that were reaching capacity across the state.
The Lisbon site is one of five trash-to-energy plants in the state along with those in Bristol, Bridgeport, Wallingford and Preston. The Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority plant in Hartford closed in 2022, leaving 875,000 tons of trash per year to be hauled to landfills in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
A majority of the Lisbon plant’s trash comes from the 12 cities and towns comprising the Southeastern Connecticut Regional Resources Recovery Authority (SCRRRA). The towns switched from the Covanta plant in Preston in 2021 based on a contract that runs through 2030.
The contract specified a cost of $69 per ton, with the towns paying $58 per ton and SCRRRA picking up the difference. It called for price increases each year set to the Consumer Price Index, to be capped at 3%.
Horgan said air pollution control systems ensure that what comes out of the stack is well below permitted limits. Among the controls, he cited 99.9% combustion efficiency that minimizes emission of harmful pollutants and the use of 1,000 fabric filter bags to remove particulate matter before the gas from the incineration process gets released into the environment.
The gas is continuously monitored through a system that measures the level of pollutants like nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and oxygen.
Norwich couple Alex Crowley and Caitlynne Kezys after the tour said it was a chance to learn about a topic new to them both.
Crowley said he’s driven by the plant on Interstate 395 many times without knowing what went on inside the building.
“I didn’t even know they were burning trash,” he said. “I just thought it was a regular power plant.”
Crowley, who identified himself as an engineer, said the plant struck him as well designed with important environmental safeguards.
Kezys described her husband as an engineering geek.
“What I took out of it as someone who’s not a process engineer, is it’s really really cool that they got rid of landfills and that they have these types of systems to turn trash to energy,” she said.
e.regan@theday.com
