Detroit Incinerator Protest March [Pics]

[jerrytimes]

Ok, I understand the frustration of an incinerator in your neighborhood, but isn't this a waste of time. Correct me if I'm wrong, and I might be because I haven't looked up much about it, but isn't the incinerator in a really bad area of Detroit, and doesn't it also make the city millions of dollars a year? Sure, it pollutes, but would you rather have a landfill? I'd like less air pollution too, but you can't have everything.

[jerrytimes]

Also, I'd assume most of these marchers are for the environment, yet they waste cardboard, wood, and paint on these signs. Where are they going to mostly end up? In landfills or incinerators! Environmentalists need to learn not to waste materials when marching or protesting wasteful polluting things.

[Russix]

Ok, I understand the frustration of an incinerator in your neighborhood, but isn't this a waste of time. Correct me if I'm wrong, and I might be because I haven't looked up much about it, but isn't the incinerator in a really bad area of Detroit, and doesn't it also make the city millions of dollars a year? Sure, it pollutes, but would you rather have a landfill? I'd like less air pollution too, but you can't have everything.

The area isn't bad, it's totally empty! Who wants to live downwind of burning trash and visits from every garbage truck in the city twice a day? Using 2003 data: It cost $33.25/ton for the city to bury it's trash in a landfill. It costs $130/ton to burn the trash in the incinerator. The city is contractually obligated to provide the incinerator with with a certian amount of trash or pay a penalty. So they accept waste from other cities at rates lower than land fills just to keep the thing going. So please explain how the city is making money paying $75 million to burn it's trash vs $19 million to bury it a year?

[Russix]

Also, I'd assume most of these marchers are for the environment, yet they waste cardboard, wood, and paint on these signs. Where are they going to mostly end up? In landfills or incinerators! Environmentalists need to learn not to waste materials when marching or protesting wasteful polluting things.

There is a recycling drop off center on Holden Street and Trumbull. Why don't you assume that they pulled this waste cardboard and wood out of the trash and then dropped it off with their other recyclables? This would seem more inline with the actions of people so concerned about this than you have represented.

[Bearinabox]

Ok, I understand the frustration of an incinerator in your neighborhood, but isn't this a waste of time. Correct me if I'm wrong, and I might be because I haven't looked up much about it, but isn't the incinerator in a really bad area of Detroit

So people who live in "really bad areas" don't matter? It's okay to make them sick, because if they deserved to be healthy they'd have grabbed their bootstraps and pulled themselves to Bloomfield Hills? And if they have a problem with it, they're "wasting time?" Wow.

[Russix]

You can see it for yourself if you have a campfire or a fireplace. There's smoke at first before it gets heated, but once a fire gets good and hot in a controlled setting, you'll see very little smoke rising. That mean there's not much in particulate matter and most of the fuel is being consumed. There may be some unseen chemical emissions, but that's what scrubbers and other filtering systems are for on industrial incinerators. There will always be some emissions, but even landfills emit significant amounts of gasses like Methane.

How do the S'mores taste over your burning trash campfire? Or did the cancer spread to your tongue first?

Methane is used by landfills to make electricity, at an outrageously lower cost too. You can skip the huge expense of trying to burn trash by recycling most of it[[LA is up to 60-70%) and bury the rest[[which produces way cleaner burning Methane). Detroit Thermal[[the principal recipient of the Incinerator’s heat energy) started using their own natural gas heating stations a year ago and no longer use the Incinerator.

[Russix]

So they accept waste from other cities at rates lower than land fills just to keep the thing going.

Yes they burn a bunch of Oakland County's trash here in the city at something like $12-$15 a ton.

[DetroitDad]

Ok, I understand the frustration of an incinerator in your neighborhood, but isn't this a waste of time. Correct me if I'm wrong, and I might be because I haven't looked up much about it, but isn't the incinerator in a really bad area of Detroit, and doesn't it also make the city millions of dollars a year? Sure, it pollutes, but would you rather have a landfill? I'd like less air pollution too, but you can't have everything.

No, the incinerator is located at I-94 and I-75, a little over a mile from Downtown Detroit, in what is essentially Midtown or New Center. It's fumes can be noticed in Woodbridge, New Center, and Midtown, depending on the direction and strength of the wind. Luckily, these places are usually upwind from the plant. The area directly to the East has all but emptied out, no thanks to the incinerator. That East side area is now one of Detroit's most derelict vacant areas.

Click here for a bird's eye view via Bing Maps.

[Meddle]

Hmmm, used to be at 96 and Southfield.

[Hamtragedy]

I'd like to know that how is it that my having to smell the incinerator almost daily gives some of you forumers the right to call me a communist, socialist, environmentalist or some other of your perceived insults?

Guess what? Your shit smells the same as mine. Your garbage, trucked down here on a daily basis, so I can smell it, smells the same as mine. Your "holier than thou" attitude wreaks as bad as the diaper smell I deal with on a daily basis. And don't give me that BS that it gets so hot that emissions are negligible. Ask those socialist Canadians what they think of the incinerator.

And by the way, don't think that smell doesn't work its way into the Grosse Pointes either. Their a bunch of socialist assholes, too, aren't they.

For once, grow up and make an effort to understand someone else's side before firing off the same useless garbage [[no pun intended) such as name calling and superiority. Much like the stench from the incinerator, it serves no useful purpose.

[oldredfordette]

jerrytimes, how many demonstrations have you attended? How do you know how these signs are produced or what happens to them when the demo is over?

[donpablo]

How dare those hypocritical protestors, you know that the ink they used on that evil cardboard [[trees) is toxic.

Ha Ha Ha!! I'm real clever eh?

[Retroit]

cloud_wall: http://www.detroitthermal.com/overview.htm

I suspect that the incinerator was allowed to be built in the city because it was believed, or at least touted by the contractor, that there would not be any smell and pollution thanks to new pollution control technologies.

I wonder how much of the smell comes from the incineration and how much comes from the piles of trash that sit around awaiting incineration.

[gazhekwe]

I remember when they were building that thing, there were a bunch of environmental regulations they had to follow. I particularly remember one thing called a bag filter that was supposed to be installed at the stack to remove the flue gases. This seemed to be a sticking point for some reason. The cost was a problem, so dear old CAY petitioned the legislature for an exception to that rule.

Remember, at that time, we were all paying to get our cars tested every year to reduce emissions? Well, we did such a good job that the Detroit emissions were lowered to an acceptable level. The petition cited this as the reason for not needing the bag filter, as this significant decrease in emissions was supposedly not needed.

I was outraged. All the cost of reduction of emissions to an acceptable level had fallen on us car owners, and now they were going to go ahead and let the City have an incinerator that would increase emissions, just because of all our work? I wrote to my state senator, who sent me the wonderfully educational response that the emissions coming out the incinerator were different from the ones coming from cars, so they were not comparable. If they can compare them to ask for the exception, they can be compared to deny the exception, so I thought. She voted to allow the exception and that was the last time I voted for her. Clean air is clean air. And yes,. I recycle, including cardboard.

Did they ever install that bag filter? I don't think so. There are some massive passive filters up there, though.

[jbd441]

I'd like to know that how is it that my having to smell the incinerator almost daily gives some of you forumers the right to call me a communist, socialist, environmentalist or some other of your perceived insults?

Guess what? Your shit smells the same as mine. Your garbage, trucked down here on a daily basis, so I can smell it, smells the same as mine. Your "holier than thou" attitude wreaks as bad as the diaper smell I deal with on a daily basis. And don't give me that BS that it gets so hot that emissions are negligible. Ask those socialist Canadians what they think of the incinerator.

And by the way, don't think that smell doesn't work its way into the Grosse Pointes either. Their a bunch of socialist assholes, too, aren't they.

For once, grow up and make an effort to understand someone else's side before firing off the same useless garbage [[no pun intended) such as name calling and superiority. Much like the stench from the incinerator, it serves no useful purpose.

Excellent post. None of my co-workers recycle at work. I dig through their garbage sorting out recyclables from the trash. I do it mostly for the generations to come. If we don't, they will end up having to find solutions to dispose of the garbage we generate today.

[Nee000]

Thanks for posting these pics. This one gave me a laugh, that mask actually looks like Bing only with more hair. LOL

[gibran]

I have recycled since 1990...and it takes time and commitment to load it up and drive to the local station...I Austin they used to pick it up at the curb...it was great... The point is that it is a cost..but if you ever slow down enough and see the amount of things that can be saved from a landfill it will blow your mind..

Environmental Justice is not always placing pollution causing things in poorer neighborhoods... ask those who profit from this [[with a lie detector test) would they live next to a smoke stack ...a refinery....an incenerator...etc...chances are no....why does it surprise the "free market" crowd that poor people don't want to too.

I am beginning to think this socialism word is the code word for caring....not that I am anything near a card carrying socialist...but if that means caring about others, the environmental, protection for American jobs, corporate accountability, government sensibility, increased employment, eliminating division and hate, developing alternative energy, freedom of speech and social justice then I am all for incorporating it into our democratic society.

[canuck]

Ok, I understand the frustration of an incinerator in your neighborhood, but isn't this a waste of time. Correct me if I'm wrong, and I might be because I haven't looked up much about it, but isn't the incinerator in a really bad area of Detroit, and doesn't it also make the city millions of dollars a year? Sure, it pollutes, but would you rather have a landfill? I'd like less air pollution too, but you can't have everything.

I've always supported incineration, especially if it's used to generate power. When done right, emissions are negligible. And it sure beats landfills.

As Russix points out, you can use landfill for power generation too. We had a huge incinerator in the central neighborhood of Rosemont in Montreal that was shut down in 1992. The original plant was completed in 1931. It burned 300 metric tonnes a day. In 1970, a new plant was built, and in spite of anti-pollution equipment the thing was a major nuisance to the area's 40000 residents. The plant was producing 9 times the accepted federal norm of furan and dioxides by 1991. Another major nuisance in a neighborhood north of Rosemont was the Miron quarry and cement factory. It was one of the largest quarries in the world at the time it closed. two 400 ft tall red and white chimneys dominated the landscape next to elevated highway 40. In 1968 parts of it were used as landfill. The cement plant was demolished in the late seventies and the quarry was now used exclusively as landfill until 2000. In 32 years dumpsters had filled 33 million tons of refuse piled 200 ft high. In 1988 the city of Montreal, which now owned the complex, built a gas collection system for evacuation. In 1996, a power generation plant using biogases from the landfill started producing electricity from 350 wells dug deep into the lovely stuff. It powers the equivalent of 82000 homes.

The old incinerator is now abandoned but left standing as is. There were plans to turn it into a skate park in the nineties but safety issues erased that possibility.

The quarry site is now called the Centre Environnemental St-Michel, and the quarry is slowly being turned into a 474 acre city park. The city's main recycling facility is there as well as the National circus arts school and the International HQ and rehearsal spaces of The Cirque du Soleil. New York City's Fresh Kills landfill site is the largest in the world. It is also being turned into a park 3 times the size of Central Park. Their biogas station is generating quite a bit of money by heating downtown Manhattan office towers.

[gazhekwe]

We have such a park and power generation station in the landfill out by Kensington Park. If you go up there, you can see where the surface is subsiding in places where the landfill contents are decomposing and compressing. It doesn't look all that safe to me, but it is a huge park.

[canuck]

Yes, They ran tests on lateral gas migration at the StMichel complex a couple of years ago, and had to build vented trenches where the trash was poorly compacted beneath the soil cover. I guess there are still a lot of unknown factors to learn about in this post industrial mess we created. Its not like the tons of methane and other dangerous gases were thousands of feet below ground; they are underfoot so to speak. I'm thinking of the risk of explosion etc... To this day, people walking in Flanders fields and the northern French countryside can be blown to bits by walking on undetonated bombs from the 1st world war. Bomb experts die also from trying to retrieve these bombs; one third of which didnt explode on landing or were buried in caches.

[jerrytimes]

So people who live in "really bad areas" don't matter? It's okay to make them sick, because if they deserved to be healthy they'd have grabbed their bootstraps and pulled themselves to Bloomfield Hills? And if they have a problem with it, they're "wasting time?" Wow.

WOW! Take everything the wrong way. All I meant by wasting time is that the thing was built over 30 years ago, it's there, there are jobs associated with it, the city makes money from it and over 700,000 tons of waste are burned in it annually. Do you know what that much waste would look like in a landfill. I bet the environmentalists wouldn't be pleased with that sight at all.

[Huggybear]

Avoid making garbage, incinerate what you can, and recycle what you can't.

Landfilling is not a practical solution in Michigan, where

• it has a demonstrated track record of failing and contaminating groundwater. The containment caps [[top and bottom) tend to get penetrated by water, fill up, and leak nasty toxic slime all over the environs [[and into the watershed).
• it generates methane, which can only [[a) escape into the environment as a super greenhouse gas or [[b) be burned into carbon dioxide, which is also a greenhouse gas.
• as anywhere, a landfill puts land out of use for construction for all time, requires maintenance for all time, and therefore is a net money drain for all time. Things like nonrecyclable plastics take hundreds of years to decay.

The historic justification for landfilling was that people have always done it - but in the 20th century and beyond, it's no longer garbage that simply dissolves into the ground. Today, it subsists because states like Michigan fail to regulate it to the point its true costs are accounted for. How anyone who cares about the environment could advocate this at all is amazing.

Incineration, though by no means perfect, has one cardinal advantage: what comes out of the chimney [[or the ash outlet) is all that is ever going to come out of it. And what it costs to burn is all that it will ever cost. Your regulation and enforcement is in the here and now [[and is federal), it is paid for in the here and now, and you don't have to rely on CERCLA and the attendant blame-fest a hundred years from now when a cleanup will be either on the state or whatever motley crew of former owners/operators it can assemble.

As for the cost, I have no problem with Detroiters' paying tons of money for garbage disposal, even if it's more than the suburbs. Everyone in the state should be paying big for generating garbage. The problem lies not in Detroit's high rate, but the "race to the bottom" pricing of landfills that attracts garbage to Michigan from hundreds of miles away [[like Toronto...) and creates no reserve for future cleanup activities. And on cost, the thing that makes incineration expensive is not having enough garbage to achieve economies of scale [[and no doubt due to Detroit's losing 200,000+ people since the incinerator was designed). The solution is not to abandon incineration to choose a cheaper [[for now), more environmentally risky solution but to find a way to achieve economies of scale. If that means taking on garbage from elsewhere and burning it up, so be it.

Recycling is important for valuable raw materials or things that cannot be burned safely, but it's not a solution for plastics. Plastic recycling is an expensive proposition that burns a lot of fossil fuel to save a little fossil fuel [[what was used to make the product) - and what comes out of plastics recycling is just non-recyclable plastic that then has to be landfilled or incinerated. I have yet to see a study that shows that the existence of recycling has reduced in any way the manufacture of virgin resin. In fact, it's pretty clear to me that people use the existence of plastics recycling to engage in massive plastics consumption. Plastic should only be going into things that really need to be plastic, and once there, it should be incinerated if it hits the waste stream. If you're sending people to die to get the raw materials [[petroleum), burning even more of it to get to a nonrecyclable end product is throwing good blood after bad.