Proposed B.C. Garbage Incinerator Could Degrade Local Air Quality

Patricia Ross is a long term councilor (19 years) for the city of Abbotsford and vice chair of the Fraser Valley Regional District. She is a Fellow of Leadership for Environment and Development (LEAD) International. LEAD is a research and training program dedicated to fostering worldwide sustainability. Patricia has received many awards for her work including Abbotsford Woman of the Year, Chamber of Commerce Newsmaker of the Year, Paul Harris Rotary Club award and Soroptimist Club “Making a Difference for Women” award.

Burning garbage: toxic air emissions soon coming to your airshed, compliments of your friendly and polite neighbors to the north. We seem intent upon sullying our carefully-cultivated “green” image by proposing to burn an additional 400,000 tons of garbage a year. This should be of great concern to residents in Washington, since we share this airshed.

It’s true. Metro Vancouver, a regional government in British Columbia similar to a county, is proposing to build one or more incinerators to burn close to 400,000 tons of garbage per year. Since Whatcom County shares an airshed with this area, its residents should be concerned and need to be informed, if they want to protect the quality of the air they breathe.

The fact that Metro Vancouver wants to build more garbage incinerators did not come as a surprise, as it already has a garbage incinerator that was built in the 1980’s and burns over 200,000 tons of garbage each year, creating toxic ash and air emissions. But the Fraser Valley Regional District (FVRD), an adjacent regional government that also shares the airshed with Whatcom County, has expressed alarmed concern that any additional incinerator could push us over the tipping point in an already stressed environment. Despite provincial instruction directing Metro Vancouver to consult with the FVRD, not all of the FVRD’s concerns have yet been heard or addressed.

The Funnel

Our region is blessed with great beauty and resources. We treasure our mountain vistas, forests, ocean views and tranquil valley, but the mountains that we so cherish are actually a major contributing factor to our air challenges. On the north side of our regions we have the Coastal Mountains, and to the south we have the Cascades. Those ranges run from the ocean eastward and converge at the city of Hope, BC, forming a triangle or funnel shape. The mouth of the funnel is Metro Vancouver and Northern Whatcom County. Because of the prevailing breezes from the west, the pollutants emitted in the mouth of the funnel are pushed eastward, but cannot easily disperse because of the barrier provided by the mountains. At night, as the air cools and flows down the sides of the mountains, the pollutants are drawn back towards the mouth. By morning, as the air heats up again, the pollutants make their way back up the valley. This flushing back and forth represents a contained distribution and concentration of pollutants within the funnel affecting the FVRD, Metro Vancouver and part of Whatcom County.

Air Quality

There is no doubt that garbage incineration causes a whole host of pollutants to be emitted into the air. In spite of the fact that many improvements have been made in capture technologies, there is still a lot of material that gets emitted.

Dioxins and furans are compounds that are formed when plastics are burned, and garbage incinerators burn a lot of plastic. They have to ­— there is little else left in the waste stream that actually produces heat. Once you remove most of the wood, paper and cardboard (and we do, because those things have monetary value), you are left with almost nothing that produces heat except plastics, which are made from oil. Dioxins and furans are very toxic compounds, for which there is no safe exposure limit. Modern incinerators destroy the vast majority of the dioxins and furans formed because they are subjected to very high heat, but even the small amounts of these compounds that remain are not safe. However, the right temperature is only reached during normal operation. Start-up and shut-down periods result in lower combustion temperatures, and therefore allow for the formation of more of these compounds. While the very-high temperatures destroy more of the dioxins and furans, high temperature combustion leads to the formation of more nitrogen oxides.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, nitrogen oxides represent a health risk to those exposed: “Because dioxins are widely distributed throughout the environment in low concentrations, are persistent and bioaccumulated, most people have detectable levels of dioxins in their tissues. These levels, in the low parts-per-trillion, have accumulated over a lifetime and will persist for years, even if no additional exposure were to occur. This background exposure is likely to result in an increased risk of cancer and is uncomfortably close to levels that can cause subtle adverse non-cancer effects in animals and humans.”1

If dioxins and furans weren’t bad enough, we know that incinerators emit heavy metals as well. Heavy metals are neurotoxins, some of which are also known carcinogens. They bioaccumulate and adversely affect the nervous system development of fetuses. Mercury, lead, cadmium, copper and chromium are all known to be emitted from garbage incinerators.

Particulate matter is a product of any combustion, and incineration of garbage is no exception. Air quality scientists measure quantities of small particles ten microns in size (PM 10), 2.5 microns (PM 2.5), and ultrafine particles smaller than 0.1 microns. These particles are important because of their small size, which allows them to penetrate deeper into a person’s lungs. Exposure to particulate matter has health impacts on people, particularly those with respiratory illness. Any kind of small particulate matter represents a health threat, but certain particles are particularly dangerous because of their chemical composition. For example, diesel particulate matter has been declared by the World Health Organization as a carcinogen. Since the nature of garbage changes depending upon what arrives at the facility, it is not possible to be sure what the chemical composition of the particles emitted from a garbage incinerator may be. Currently there is an especially-great concern regarding ultrafine particles, as these are believed to more readily enter the bloodstream and, since we cannot know exactly what the chemical species are of these particles, there may be very harmful exposures. Because the monitoring technology is so new, there is not yet sufficient data on ultrafine particles emitted from garbage incinerators to fully understand the health risks they represent. The consequence of this information gap is that there are not yet standards for ultrafine particles, but many residents in the Fraser Valley are worried.

The air pollution issue of greatest concern to the FVRD is ground-level ozone. Each summer during “ozone season,” the Lower Fraser Valley experiences some of the worst air quality in BC. Ozone is a major component in smog and is formed in the atmosphere from a combination of nitrogen oxides (NOx), volatile organic compounds (VOC), and sunlight. The sources of VOCs are both natural and human-made, including solvents and other volatile liquids like gasoline and piney-smelling compounds that come from trees. Nitrogen oxides come from combustion – all combustion. When garbage is burned in an incinerator, nitrogen oxides are formed. When the combustion temperature is very high, as is needed for the destruction of dioxins and furans, relatively more NOx is formed. Since any incinerator in the airshed will only exacerbate the smog problem, the FVRD believes that construction of the facility is bad policy, for our residents and for everyone living within the airshed.

Soil and Water Pollution

Proponents of incineration often tout the advances that have been made in the past few decades in control technology. It is true that some pollutants are emitted at a fraction of the rate that they were emitted 20 years ago; however, there are still emissions, and some of these emissions – like carcinogens that will be emitted into the airshed – should not be acceptable at any permitted rate.

Pollution that is successfully captured within the incineration facility and is not emitted to the air ends up in the ash. As a consequence, the ash can be highly toxic, with heavy metals and other contaminants in it, requiring special disposal in a landfill appropriate for collecting hazardous waste so as not to adversely affect local waterways. Recent tests of the ash from the Burnaby incinerator, however, which were being sent to the regular municipal waste landfill, indicated levels of cadmium higher than the standard permitted for normal disposal. Unfortunately, the test result came back after the ash had already been dumped in the landfill. Metro Vancouver was required to remove the ash from the landfill and ship it to Alberta, where there was an appropriate hazardous waste landfill that was willing to accept the toxic ash – all at great taxpayer expense. Though proponents claim high success in the ability of new incineration facilities to capture emissions, this does not always mean our soil and water are safe.

The production of ash is an inevitable consequence of incineration and perpetuates the need to have a landfill for disposal. Incinerator proponents will argue that there are only two choices: incineration or landfill. This is a false dichotomy, because incineration requires available landfill capacity and there are more alternatives to incineration than landfilling.

Modern Waste Handling

It’s easy to simply say “I’m against it”, and we are, but we at FVRD know that viable, cheaper and safer alternatives exist. Modern programs and techniques are rapidly developing to handle solid waste so that valuable material is separated and recovered before it becomes garbage, and residual material is processed to remove still more resources. Implementation of these programs and techniques costs a fraction of what a new incinerator, the treatment of the resulting toxic ash, and the expenses for sending residual material to the landfill would cost.

The principles of Zero Waste, as defined by the Zero Waste International Alliance, do not allow for any garbage to be burned. Diversion is achieved by maximization of reuse and recycling of the waste stream. Most programs find success by implementing robust source separation systems, meaning that people sort the material. Of particular importance is a good organic collection program to address food scraps, since these are the biggest cause of contamination. Building on the successes of cities like San Jose and San Francisco, we believe that an overall diversion rate of the entire waste stream of 90% is a realistic target as we strive for a goal of Zero Waste.

Once recyclable paper, cardboard, metal, plastic and organics are removed from the waste stream, there is very little left as residual. However, not everyone participates in the separation programs. Particularly difficult are multifamily dwellings like apartment buildings and high rise towers. The City of San Francisco is working on a large outreach campaign to increase compliance with the recycling programs, and having some success. It requires a good deal of time and effort and negotiation of language barriers for people for whom English may not be a first language.

In addition to the recycling programs, those areas that have been successful with zero waste strategies also focus on re-use of second-hand material. Many have a thrift store near the recycling centre that sells recovered material that can still be useful. Similarly, some have repair facilities to fix broken items which can then be sold in the thrift store.

Finally, a good Zero Waste program must hold manufacturers of goods accountable for the garbage that their products and packaging become. Such extended producer responsibility requires vision, political will, and a long-term commitment to Zero Waste principles.

Conclusion

Metro Vancouver’s plan to incinerate an additional 400,000 tons of garbage per year is bad for a variety of reasons. Contrary to the accepted definition of Zero Waste, incinerators produce waste and emit it in the form of air pollution and toxic ash. The air pollution that will result from the garbage incinerators exposes Whatcom County residents to even more pollution from Metro Vancouver – pollution that may be a concern for human health, the growth of crops, and quality of life.

The $500-million boondoggle that is being proposed is unnecessary, because there are proven alternatives to manage the waste without resorting to burning it. Everyone living in this airshed deserves better and should demand that Metro Vancouver abandon their plans for garbage incineration.

Contact Information

• Paul Henderson, General Manager Solid Waste Services: Paul.Henderson@metrovancouver.org (604) 432-6442

• Malcolm Brodie, chair of the Zero Waste Committee, malcolmbrodie@telus.net

• British Columbia Premier Christy Clark: premier@gov.b.ca

• Fraser Valley Regional District: www.facebook.com/airqualitymatters www.fvrd.bc.ca

Endnotes

1. http://www.epa.gov/pbt/pubs/dioxins.htm