HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — Private firm Guam Resource Recovery Partners aims to invest some $180 million in a waste-to-energy project that, according to its representative, has been caught in “politics” and “myths” despite its potential to help solve the trash crisis on Guam.
GRRP representative David Sablan, guest speaker at the recent Mayors’ Council of Guam meeting, said there’s momentum building on waste-to-energy technology, and asked mayors for their formal support.
A waste-to-energy plant generates energy by burning trash to create steam, which is then fed through a turbine to produce electricity.
Sablan is also seeking support from senators and Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero’s signature on an amended contract with GRRP, allowing the private firm to collect solid waste for its waste-to-energy plant.
Some senators have started bringing up waste-to-energy ideas in talks of addressing Guam’s solid waste woes.
“It’s going to be about a $180 million project altogether. So there’s going to be about 60 jobs to be available for our people. We’re going to go into a training program to make sure the people understand what they need to do,” Sablan, chairman of the Guam Power Authority board from 1987 to 1994, told mayors.
Guam Solid Waste Authority General Manager Irvin Slike, earlier this year, told senators that incinerating trash as a solution to Guam’s solid waste disposal could come at a higher cost.
An advantage is that burning waste reduces volume, so it can extend the life of a landfill, but the waste left behind still needs to be addressed, meaning costs don’t disappear, according to Slike.
For Guam, at 97,000 tons, the cost would be about $82 million. Amortize that over 20 years, and it would mean increasing the current commercial tonnage rate by $42, to be about $213 per ton, Slike told senators in response to their questions.
About 20 years ago, the Guam Legislature passed Public Law 25-175 to make it illegal to reduce household waste by incineration and no public funds were to be used for any incineration.
Support
Some mayors voiced their support for a waste-to-energy plant on Guam, after seeing for themselves how it’s done in other places like Seattle and Japan.
Dededo Mayor Melissa Savares, who visited a waste-to-energy plant in Okinawa, said the highly sanitized facility didn’t have the smell normally associated with a solid waste site.
Inalåhan Mayor Anthony Chargualaf said he strongly supports this alternative to the landfill at Layon, citing his concern about the harm to the Ugum River, one of the seven rivers down south.
“I can tell you right now that what’s happening at Layon (landfill) is contaminating the water,” Sablan said, adding that “people that have been hiking are starting to see that the rivers are getting polluted.”
An Inalåhan school, he said, had to hold classes outside at times because of the smell coming from the landfill.
Sablan also rebutted the claim that a waste-to-energy plant will release dioxins and furans, known to be toxic chemicals, into the air.
“Actually, if you increase the heat above 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, maybe around 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit, in which the incinerator will be designed that way, then you break down the molecular structure of dioxins and furans into the basic elements of oxygen, hydrogen and carbon and that’s what gets emitted into the air and it’s not harmful anymore,” Sablan said.
He said this and other facts about waste-to-energy technology have been buried every time the alternative energy source comes up in discussions because of “politics.”
“What am I asking from the mayors? For your understanding of this project, to dispel any rumors or lies you may be hearing,” Sablan said.
Trash volume
Chalan Pago-Ordot Mayor Jessy Gogue asked about recent remarks from the Guam Solid Waste Authority that there’s not enough trash volume on Guam to make a waste-to-energy plant viable.
Sablan said that may be a result of a lack of information about GRRP’s plan.
GRRP, he said, needs at least 300 tons of trash to produce 12 megawatts of power to make it economically viable, and that volume is present on Guam, he said. He added that GRRP would also seek to acquire solid waste from the military.
Sablan gave a draft resolution to the mayors’ council for its consideration. Alig, who also visited a waste-to-energy plant in Seattle, said this will be discussed by the body as a whole.
Alig said former Gov. Carl Gutierrez, during his administration, supported waste-to-energy technology and he’s now curious as to what the current governor thinks about it. He then asked Sablan about the main criticism about the project.
“Actually, it was all political,” Sablan said. “Like I said, no one has read the contract, yet they had all this opinion.”
Critics said Guam law has long banned waste-to-energy facilities, or trash incinerators.
GRRP has argued that it held its incinerator contract long before Guam banned incinerators.
The governor’s office has not commented on the GRRP plan.
Sablan said a waste-to-energy plant would lower the cost of trash collection for consumers — from about $30 a month to about $10 a month, he said.
“Because the production of electricity will offset the cost of the tipping fee. And then it becomes very economical and very competitive and, in fact, very desirable to pay that amount,” he said.
The governor set aside $12 million in American Rescue Plan funding for universal trash collection.
When the cells at the Layon Landfill have been used up in about 40 years, Sablan said, the next generation will have to find another site.
“Mayors and vice mayors, let’s not have them deal with that. As parents, in our generation, we have to take care of this problem,” Sablan said. “Remove all of these myths, all of these things that are being said about this project, this contract.”
By burning 10 truckloads of trash, for example, only about a truckload of ash gets deposited at the landfill, Sablan said.
Fly ash from the waste-to-energy plant, he said, could be used to manufacture concrete.
He represents a firm that produces fly ash and then sold it to the contractor that built two hangars at Andersen Air Force Base a few years back.
“They needed this fly ash in order to strengthen this concrete because it’s like 6,000 psi,” Sablan told mayors. “You can drop a bomb on those hangars and people inside would not even feel it.”
Piles of trash dumped illegally on the side of the road in the Zero Down area of Yigo, Guam are seen on May 6, 2022.
