Towns want NYS to consider waste-to-energy plants 'renewable" to protect them

As LIPA’s contracts to buy power from four regional waste-to-energy plants approach their expiration date, town supervisors across Long Island are calling on the state to reclassify the plants as "renewable."

The requested designation would give a new lease on life to the plants as they face a state mandate for an emission-free grid by 2040. The Long Island Power Authority’s contracts with the four plants expire in 2027.

The supervisors from Babylon, Islip, Hempstead and Huntington towns, which each house Reworld waste-to-energy plants, are calling for the state to renew the contracts with LIPA and to designate the power as "zero emission." They also want LIPA to hike the cost of power from the plants closer to what it pays for offshore-wind energy, which is among the most expensive in its portfolio.

The town supervisors' September letter to Gov. Kathy Hochul highlighted a looming "solid waste crisis" on Long Island as the governor’s cap-and-invest program to limit greenhouse gas emissions by major companies and other programs threatened to hike costs for the plants.

"In the event these facilities do not continue to operate, an estimated 1.8 million tons per year of municipal solid waste will need to be shipped off Long Island for disposal," the supervisors wrote, estimating that would increase truck trips on the region’s "already stressed roadways and bridges" by more than 180,000 a year.

But green-energy advocates say reclassifying the plants as green is a mistake that flies in the face of the state’s climate law and its emission-free power mandates. They said it could slow the adoption of wind and solar energy.

"LIPA needs to get out of this dirty business of contracting with trash incinerators," said Monique Fitzgerald, climate organizer for the Long Island Progressive Coalition, an activist group.

On Friday, New York State said it ordered Reworld to pay $378,500 in penalties and another $500,000 to an "environmental benefit" project fund after an investigation found the facility violated state law and its operating permit in waste-mixing practices from 2006 to 2013.

Reworld takes issue with the characterization of the plants as dirty, asserting they are cleaner than natural gas plants when taking into account the emissions they avoid were the waste to be trucked to a landfill. "If we turn off [the power from] a waste-to-energy facility, not only do we have to replace that megawatt-hour electricity, we also have to replace that waste management service," a Reworld official said.

Gordon Tepper, a spokesman for Hochul, said she met with Long Island officials Wednesday and discussed the topic. 

"While waste-to-energy plays a role in Long Island's waste management, ensuring an affordable and responsible waste management future for the Island demands a comprehensive approach that considers all options," Tepper said in a written statement. "The state is committed to working with local governments to find solutions that balance environmental goals with practical policies that work for the localities."

Babylon Town Supervisor Rich Schaffer, in an email, confirmed that Hochul's staff "has engaged us in discussion regarding our concerns," and indicated a "willingness to work with us on the issue of waste-to-energy plants and the solid waste disposal issues on the Island." 

The supervisors letter requested "renewal and long-term extensions" of the waste-to-energy plants by LIPA, with annually escalating power contracts and the cost of energy "preferably closer to the rate LIPA has agreed to pay for offshore wind energy."

Long Island’s four waste-to-energy plants, formerly branded and operated by Covanta, which was taken over by Swedish conglomerate EQT Infrastructure in 2021 and renamed Reworld, burn more than 70% of the Island’s residential waste and produce 970,000 megawatt-hours of power for LIPA each year.

Reworld, which owns three of the plants — in Hempstead, Huntington and Babylon — and operating a fourth owned by Islip, in a prepared statement said it "shares the concerns outlined in the [supervisors’] letter," and "greatly values its long-standing partnership with LIPA ..."

While it’s unclear how much more LIPA would pay for the power from the plants were it to consider the requested cost escalations, LIPA’s current contracts for the plants are valued at nearly $1 billion over 15 years.

In 2023 alone, LIPA spent $66 million buying energy from the facilities, which make the lion’s share of their revenue through tipping fees from trash companies and municipalities. Since 2012, when the most recent contracts with the plants were approved, the authority has spent $830 million buying energy from them, according to a Newsday review of LIPA contracts. In all, the plants’ total contract value through August, 2027 is $989 million.

LIPA officials declined to be interviewed on the topic but in a statement said it plans to work with Reworld "and other stakeholders to determine how those facilities might further our objectives of being clean, reliable and affordable." 

Between 30% to 40% of what is burned in the plants is plastic — residential trash that comes to the sites in plastic bags and plastic in the form of unrecycled trash, according to Reworld. The plants also use large amounts of water for cooling. The Hempstead plant alone draws 455.5 million gallons a year from local aquifers. Other plants have used treated wastewater for cooling.

The plants are required to use sophisticated air-pollution control measures and continually monitor emissions for air-quality compliance. Reworld officials said compliance scrutiny of the plants is "significantly more stringent" than that for traditional natural gas plants.

Temperatures of upward of 1,800 degrees ensures that micro plastics are not introduced into the air from the stacks, they said. Filtration equipment and scrubbers are "very effective in pulling out all of that particulate matter."

Reworld officials said plastics in the waste stream "don’t make our process better. If anything, they may slow it down."

"The less plastic we see in the waste stream the better overall for everybody and the better our process is," a senior official said.

The largest of the plants, in Hempstead, has been the subject of scrutiny and a decade-old lawsuit by a former employee-turned-whistleblower who charged it improperly mixed waste for more than a decade that allowed toxic fly-ash to disperse into the open air on its way to the Brookhaven landfill. The state DEC recently announced finding more trucks operated with improperly mixed ash than it previously found after the lawsuit and a series of stories in Newsday.

Reworld says the practices disclosed by the DEC were cleaned up a decade ago.

A 2023 paper by the National Center for Biotechnology Information found that "modern" waste-to-energy plants must meet "very stringent emission standards, making thermal treatment of waste a viable and environmentally friendly option for generating electricity and heat which can then be used for domestic, commercial, or industrial applications."

The report concluded there is "broad scientific consensus" that the facilities "do not adversely impact human health." Newsday in 2019 reported two of the facilities had been among the nation's largest emitters of mercury, though plant officials say those levels have been driven down sharply. 

But opponents question those assertions, noting the mountain of waste they generate that’s also accumulating in landfills.

"We need to reduce our waste instead of trying to burn waste," said Fitzgerald. "We just continue to consume more and pollute more in that model. We need a model that brings the total consumption down. And incineration is never going to get us there."

In their letter, the supervisors said the ash from the facilities should be repurposed, and called on the DEC to work on a plan to do so.

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.comMHarringtonNews

Mark Harrington, a Newsday reporter since 1999, covers energy, wineries, Indian affairs and fisheries.