FORT LAWN -- A project that would convert solid waste into electricity is moving forward in Chester County.
The Chester County Council gave initial approval this week to recommendations from the county's planning and zoning boards to rezone 100 acres off S.C. 9 to allow New Jersey-based Covanta Energy to build a waste-to-energy plant, commonly referred to as an incinerator, near Fort Lawn.
The project is expected to cost at least $500 million and create around 50 permanent jobs, along with related temporary jobs, said John Phillips, vice president of business development for Covanta, which operates more than 40 of these plants around the country.
The County Council gave unanimous approval on its first vote Monday. A second vote will come in a specially called meeting Friday, and the final vote will come in December.
“We just think it'll be an asset to us,” Chester County Supervisor Carlisle Roddey said.
Clearing the County Council's three votes is just one hurdle. The project still must get approval from the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control before construction can start, not to mention financing. A groundbreaking would probably be at least a year away, Phillips said.
The plant — touted as an environmentally friendly way to dispose of solid waste because it reduces the production of greenhouse gases while generating more electricity — will save Chester County around $1 million a year on its waste disposal, Roddey said. Now, the county ships its garbage to Columbia for disposal.
The county plans to negotiate a “tipping fee” for when other communities want to use the facility, which would make money for the county. For example, if another city or county wanted to send its garbage to the plant, Covanta would pay Chester County a host fee.
The particular fee hasn't been discussed, Roddey said. But in general, he said, such a fee could bring the host community $1 or more for every ton of outside garbage.
That, along with the permanent and temporary jobs expected from the plant and the roughly half-billion-dollar investment, has Chester County leaders hopeful the project can be a boost to the local economy and its 21.1 percent jobless rate.
“It's going to take 3½ years to build this facility … 1,100 to 1,300 construction workers,” Roddey said.
That many workers will “drop a lot of money in Chester County,” he said.
“Even if they don't live here, they'll buy something to eat, they'll buy gas,” Roddey said. “There's not many times you get an industry or a plant that's going to spend 400 to 600 million dollars.”
The plant will use no public money, Roddey said.
Covanta likes Chester County because of its location, Phillips said.
“It's got a very good site, with good transportation access,” he said. “Good strategic location for the region.”
County leaders have been welcoming, Phillips said, so he anticipates the company will get final approval from the council.
“They have been very enthusiastic,” he said. “We're confident.”
Councilman Alex Oliphant said he supports the project because it will be good for the environment and generate “quite a few million dollars a year” to the tax base. It also will mean some much-needed high-paying jobs to Chester County, he said.
“Those are some pretty good reasons,” Oliphant said.
In a waste-to-energy plant, municipal solid waste is transferred into combustion chambers, where it is reduced to 10 percent of its original volume, according to the Covanta Web site. The process heats up water in steel tubes that is then turned into steam and sent through a turbine that continuously generates electricity.
Though waste-to-energy plants have been shown to be cleaner than other energy production methods, they still produce some pollutants, such as carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide.
New York Newsday reported earlier this year that 2007 state environmental records showed a Covanta plant in the town of Hempstead emitted 2.46 million pounds of nitrogen oxide, 496,000 pounds of carbon dioxide and 357,000 pounds of sulfur dioxide.
However, that's “well within” federal and state emissions standards, a N.Y. state Department of Environmental Conservation spokeswoman told the newspaper.
Jason Foster 803-329-4066
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