W2E plant - when is the deadline?
Some of you may remember this handout from the July 8 Council meeting. The Council saw October 1 (a week ago) as the deadline to move forward with CRRA:
More recently, there's been talk of the deadline being in mid-October.
But now?
Word came today that the Council doesn't know when decisions must be made.
Tim White
4 comments:
It was just a few years ago that CRRA worked hard and fast to get the State of Connecticut to give ENRON 250 million dollars in a hair brained scheme which as we all know now basically stole 250 million dollars from the people of Connecticut. And just like the present scheme which includes turning garbage-to-gold by generating electricity from steam generated by burning garbage, the past scheme which scammed the state out of 250 million was similar concerning the wonders of garbage-to-gold. The 250 million scam would have paid back the ‘loan’ of 250 million dollars over decades of purchases of trash generated electricity production in a trash burning plant. Of course ENRON never bought any of the electricity that time so - - -.
I for one am hoping that CRRA has effectively changed the despicable corrupt culture that resulted in the 250 million dollar theft but when one views the plan for unloading the very old and worn Wallingford plant to the towns for 10s of millions or to the present operator for a single dollar bill one begins to wonder - - the more things change the more they stay the same?
If the towns don't buy it, they can not control their destinies.
Once the contractor buys it, they can charge whatever they can get and it is not going to be less. Or, they can turn around and sell it to another company that will scalp us too.
Be realistic, the price will be set by independent appraisers, so if the plant needs refurbishing it will demand a lower price.
Remember there are 5 towns in this deal and that reduces the risks. At some point, the towns can train people to run the plant and get rid of the contractor.
It's time for main street to run as much as they can and not count on someone else who doesn't have our interests at heart.
I believe we can control our destiny. That's why I've been doing research, such as this.
The town has options. And this may encourage greater recycling... which is definitely possible.
Right now, Cheshire recycles about 25% of waste by weight.
About two yrs ago, Walmart looked at their dumpsters and found that 80% of their waste was recyclable.
I'm convinced that Cheshire could double recyclables and greatly reduce our need for trash disposal services.
If the towns don’t buy it, they can’t control their destinies sounds like a great idea except for one very big what IF. Process plants such as the one in question usually get to a point at the 20 or 25 year mark where all sorts of unexpected things come up. Stuff breaks, some or even all the original pieces and parts become so obsolete due to simple stuff like for instance the original lower bidder for the equipment went bankrupt or sold out and tossed all the old design drawings and calculations etc. that when a small part on a device fails you might need to spend hundreds of thousands on a complete new system just to get the process stream moving again.
Want to make your job one of slow death by 10,000 cuts, try picking up the operation of a 20 or 30 year old plant like the one CRRA is trying to dump on the local towns. And when you contemplate just how wonderful controlling our own destiny just might be spend a moment contemplating just how well our local elected and hired officials have done with simple stuff, like a new pool with an out of sight heating bill that only grows geometrically or a high school which even today is still heated by electricity. The town has shown time and again that they cannot run much of anything in a fashion which does not require continuing annual tax increases for fixing stuff which was not well thought out on day one.
And while we think about those items here’s another to contemplate, maybe Wal-Mart has done great stuff picking through their dumpsters and finding that most of what is thrown away can be recycled. It’s a sure bet that at some point people go the next step too. They will figure out how to reduce stuff that needs to be thrown away in the first place. When that happens, garbage-fuel may actually become quite hard to find. Just a couple of years ago no one would have projected declining gasoline use in America but as we now know if you boost the price too high consumption declines and may never again increase.
No one in the first place likes spending money to buy wrappings and packaging which must be thrown away immediately upon taking possession of a purchase from a store. The declining garbage-fuel scenario is one the prospective owner towns should clearly understand before they jump into this whole pile of garbage because if garbage-fuel becomes scarce there is less likelihood of generating profitable amounts of electricity for sale at inflated rates which seems to be one of the political talking points concerning this deal.
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