From the Michigan Citizen, June 24-30^th Issue

State backs incinerator

By Diane Bukowski

The Michigan Citizen

Despite growing opposition from environmentalists and workers, the State of Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) has issued a draft permit for the downriver Minergy Clear Horizons incinerator.

Protesters plan to be present both inside and outside a 7 p.m. public hearing on the permit Thursday, June 28, at the Delray United Action Council Center at 7914 W. Jefferson, near Springwells.

The Minergy incinerator is to be built at 7819 W. Jefferson and Zug Island Road, in the predominantly Black and Latino community of Delray.

"This is an attempt to hand the City’s stewardship of public health and the environment to a private corporation whose primary goal is maximizing profit, not public health," said John Riehl, President of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 207.

His Local, which represents most of the 199 city positions at the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) that will be lost if the private incinerator is built, has called for an informational picket outside the hearing at 6:30 p.m.

The Minergy plant allegedly will incinerate 500-600 tons a day of wastewater solids from the city’s Wastewater Treatment Plant on W. Jefferson, as well as coal introduced to facilitate the process. The plant would replace 14 smaller city incinerators.

"Minergy says minimal dioxins will be produced," said Saulus Simoliunas, a Water Department senior chemist. "But they will be producing dioxins 50 times above the limit. This is the most dangerous chemical produced by man. It’s carcinogenic and mutagenic. This is why today incinerators across the country are being shut down."

Simoliunas said 70% of municipalities use land application of processed solids rather than incineration.

Simoliunas presented a research paper on the proposed Minergy facility last week at a conference of the International Association for Great Lakes Research in Green Bay, Wisconsin, near the site of Minergy’s first incinerator in Neenah, Wisconsin.

Simoliunas said the MDEQ has issued the draft permit without using guidelines issued by the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the National Research Council, which recommended a different process using activated carbon to control dioxin emissions.

He claims that the MDEQ altered regulatory limits on dioxin production from two-tenths of a nanogram per cubic meter of air to one nanogram to accommodate the facility.

Two recent reports from a coalition of 14 major state environmental groups have blasted the MDEQ, a five-year-old state agency established by Governor John Engler, for similar practices on other projects, saying the agency collaborates with private corporations to violate environmental laws.

However, Rick O’Connor, Vice-President of Minergy in Wisconsin, said, "The Minergy Clear Horizons facility will be a benefit to the community. It will produce 72% less harmful chemicals than the current DWSD incinerators. In addition the facility will recover all the energy from the process to produce electricity, which will be sold to the local area power grid at current market prices. As well, it will melt the wastewater solids into glass, rather than ash that requires landfills."

O’Connor claimed, "We are working very closely with local neighborhood and environmental groups. Most of them have been to our Neenah facility. The plant is mainly an issue with outside groups."

Calls to representatives of the Delray United Action Council were unanswered by press time.

Diane Lickfelt, a representative of Michigan State University’s Technical Outreach Services for Communities (TOSC) program, which co-sponsored a community meeting on Minergy with the Council in March, said TOSC’s recommendations on the draft permit were not yet ready for publication. She indicated, however, that TOSC had input with the MDEQ in producing the draft permit.

"In the last month or so, we called some of the more established organizations including Southwest Detroiters for an Environmental Vision and Detroiters Working for Economic Justice (DWEJ), but they have decided to submit their own comments."

Donelle Wilkins of DWEJ had not returned a call by press time, but her group was among the fourteen who recently criticized the MDEQ.

Minergy Detroit, LLC, which has a contract with the City of Detroit to build the facility, is a subsidiary of the Wisconsin Energy Corporation, a utility holding company with $2 billion in revenue. Profits from the sale of the glass aggregate produced from incinerating the City of Detroit’s wastewater solids, and from the electric power generated, will go into the company’s coffers.

The Wisconsin company was one of the major bidders when the City’s Public Lighting Department issued a request for proposals (RFP) in 1998 calling for privatization of the Mistersky Power Plant, located near the proposed Minergy site at 7819 W. Jefferson. Action on that RFP is still pending.

The Detroit City Council approved the 15-year contract with Minergy Detroit, LLC in September, 1998 after being repeatedly pressured by the administration of Mayor Dennis Archer.

The Detroit Economic Growth Corporation, headed by the Mayor’s sister-in-law, C. Beth DunCombe, brokered the deal for the sale of the 80-acre former Detroit Coke site owned by Allied Signal to Minergy, which plans to use only 20 acres for its facility. The remainder has allegedly been slated for the relocation of the cement plants on Detroit’s east riverfront, where MGM Grand plans to build a permanent casino.

Only Maryann Mahaffey, Brenda Scott, and Kay Everett voted against the contract. Council member Sheila Cockrel, who led the cheers for the proposal, received a $750 campaign contribution in August, 1998 from a representative of Minergy.

"In the upcoming election, it is necessary for us to ask Gil Hill, Nicholas Hood, and both Cockrels why did they votefor Minergy," commented Simoliunas.

"Even the rotten Republican government in Lansing was a little better than the city in keeping the plant off for two years."

The MDEQ’s Public Participation Documents for Minergy Detroit, LLC (Permit to Install Application Number 175-00) detailing its staff recommendations, are available on-line at http://www.deq.state.mi.us/aqd, or at the Wayne County Department of Environment, Air Quality Management Division, 640 Temple Suite 700, Detroit (phone: 313-833-3528.)