There's a Whole Lotta Bitching To Be Done

Thanks Heather for the good info, helps keep the negative people like nailing jello informed so they can stop complaning about growth something that platte county needs....

Wyoming landfills are definitely a growing problem.  I was truly saddened when I researched how much of a problem.  I have always thought of Wyoming as one of the most beautiful and pristine places in the United States.  It was very eye opening to me, to say the least, when I started researching Wyoming's landfills to determine if one of our waste to energy facilities would ever be a viable option in such a rural area.

According to the Wyoming DEQ there are just over 130 landfills in Wyoming.  Of those 130 landfills, DEQ studies show that at least 48 will eventually leak.  Currently there are at least 21 Wyoming landfills that are known to be leaking.  One of the biggest problems with leaking landfills is that leachate infiltrates the groundwater when landfills leak.

In response to two other comments I saw on here yesterday: what kind of air pollution will this plant emit and what will be going into the air from the stack? What happens to the ash?

While our plant will have a stack, it is there only for emergency use in a catastrophic failure event.  Outside of that the stack will only be used twice a year for a few minutes for testing purposes.  This is to ensure functionality in the event of a catastrophic failure.

The ash that will be produced by our plant, with the technology we are using, is inert.  The ash is recyclable and can be sold to various manufacturing companies to be used in asphalt, concrete, and concrete blocks.  It makes more sense to us to resell the ash as a construction material.

The information I have provided on here about the landfills can be found by searching leaking landfills in Wyoming which will take you to several memos and reports on the Wyoming DEQ website.  You can also find more information on the newer waste to energy technologies available on the Waste To Energy Research and Technology Council website.  There are also pictures and videos of various waste to energy facilities throughout the United States and the world.  Hope this information helps.  Heather Foster

Oh, by the way, have any of you considered that the proposed waste to energy plant near Guernsey may also be able to help with the growing problem of landfills in Wyoming?

For any of you who have questions, comments or concerns about the Waste To Energy plant being constructed near Guernsey.  Let me start by saying I am a Platte and Goshen County native.  My family has ranched there for generations.  I, too, care a tremendous amount about protecting the area and the state of Wyoming as a whole.  I am also the Director Of Public Relations and Marketing for American Renewable Energy Associates.  

The article that was released in the Platte County Record Times was not our press release, but an article keeping the community up to date on the progress we are making with our plant.  We will be doing our official press release soon.

We are not some fly by night company looking to come in make money and get out.  Several of the partners in our firm are looking at Guernsey as the place they want to live and retire.  We are considering the overall impact on the community every step of the way with every aspect of our project.

The housing we will be constructing will not be something temporary or thrown together.  We are going to be constructing permanent, nice, single family homes in phases as we progress with the project.  We are not going to be flooding the market with homes.   We will be maintaining ownership of the homes we are building and if down the road we decide to sell some of them, we will do it in increments.

Regarding environmental hazards, there is a lot of misinformation circulating about the safety of Waste To Energy facilities.  While older technologies had reasons to be concerned, newer technologies provide a much safer and far better way to address the environmental challenges of dealing with garbage.  We are using state of the art technology which is extremely clean and safe.  The plant that we are modeling ours after won the 2008 power award.  That plant is located in Lee County, Florida.  Feel free to look them up online.

We are working with Platte County Officials, all the municipalities within a one hundred and twenty radius, the Department of Environmental Quality, Platte County Economic Development and Guernsey Economic Development every step of the way on this project.  We are not asking from any funding from any of the governments or agencies involved.  AREA is providing all of our own financing for this entire project.

As far as job creation goes, there will be a lot of direct and indirect positions created.  There will be both temporary and permanent job creation during the construction phase and operation of the plant.  We are going to be hiring locally before we hire outside the area.  We hope to have our local office open by the middle of summer if not sooner.  In the meantime, if you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact me or view our website at http://www.area4energy.com  All of our contact information is on the website.  Warm regards and hope to see you around the community soon.  Heather Foster

The fact that "more info" is making the claims that he or she is making simply demonstrates how much misinformation is out there. First of all, the EPA does not monitor airborne emissions from power plants; the power plant itself does that, and is expected to self-report to the EPA. Unless you are in the habit of calling the highway patrol every time your speedometer reads higher than 75, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out the flaw in that enforcement mechanism.

Each power plant is given a permit that allows it to emit a certain amount of air pollution, and the scrubbers only need to be effective to the extent that they regulate the plant's emissions to that amount.  Now, how much air pollution will THIS power plant emit?  We don't know.  And if anybody DARES to ask that question, they are given an evasive response like "Don't worry, we have scrubbers," or "the EPA monitors our emissions" (even though it doesn't) or, my personal favorite, the plea to ignore the issue all together: "Stop focusing on the negative, and just focus on how many jobs this plant will create."

And by the way, I certainly HOPE that "more info" is not correct in claiming that the bottom ash from the incinerator will be disposed in the local landfill in the same manner as ordinary garbage. Bottom ash from an incinerator is highly toxic (primarily because of its high heavy metal content) and cannot safely be treated like ordinary garbage. That isn't to say that there is no way to manage the bottom ash in a (relatively) safe manner, but if the plan is to simply dump the bottom ash from all the garbage this plant will be importing into the Platte County landfill as if it was a pile of old newspapers, then that is a really bad plan.

Power plants by law are not allowed to operate in a situation were they are bypassing the scrubbers or any of the other enviromental controls, the EPA monitors the number that are required to be turned in and kept track of, you talk about the housing boom and bust, that's the ride that you take, the additional income from taxing the power plant will more than make up for the increase in the town of Guernsey's expansion needs be it for more police and other services, but I think the town has enough people working for it right now to support that.  The leftover stuff from burning the trash will be dealt with in the same manner that trash is handled now, it will be buried just like the landfill only after burning it the buried will be ash and it speeds up the process, I'm tired of hearing all of the negative people around here in the community that don't want anything to change and are happy with the status quo of how things are.  WAKE UP more jobs more families the school will benefit from a higher enrollment, and additional tax money.   I don't know how many people the sunrise mine used to have working there but when that shut down their was an impact people lost jobs and housing got cheaper, your worried about your taxes going up.  That's a valid concern but you can appeal the county acessors decision if they think the value of your property has gone up.  More jobs more money, think about the local business that will enjoy the boom in there sales.  The grocery store will likely be the biggest one to gain from an influx of people.  The guard camp still wants to add more people Guernsey get ready for it because it's your time to grow.

You got it right. Look all around Wyoming and you'll see towns that built housing and then BUST. Jefferson City is a classic. Add toxic waste to that and you have yet another situation where Wyoming sells itself and its soul without any regard to the future. Happens over and over and over. And that was a press release in the Record Times and that's all you'll ever see from them when it comes to anything like this. Wait until the wind farm people in chugeater, novelution, start asking for infrastructure money. Oh, they have? You bet they have. They're getting roads and housing and who knows what. And they told the economic development corporation that there would be 35 jobs by April. That's two weeks away. Now the first jobs will be at the "end of the year". Rape happens all the time in Wyoming. We just like to call it progress. You should get your reporting on this plant put on the front page of Wheaterville where more could see it. They do that if you contact them.

The statement "think of the positive not the down sides" reminds me of what the Wizard of Oz said to Dorothy:  "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."  The proper approach is to weigh the costs against the benefits, try and mitigate the costs, and make a fully informed decision. It isn't to pretend the costs don't exist.

Yes, the plant will create jobs (as does any business). On the other hand, yes, there will be a "boom," which will inevitably be followed by a "bust."  The project may not be as big as the Power Plant in Wheatland was, but then again Guernsey is less than 1/3 the size of Wheatland, so it doesn't take as much to generate a "bubble" there.  The fact that they're talking about building new housing to accommodate the construction workers tells me everything I need to know about that point.  It means that so many workers are going to be brought in that the housing that the town has right now isn't enough for them.  It isn't too much of a leap to predict that there are other things about the town that aren't big enough to accommodate that large influx of people:  More police may have to be hired, more teachers, more infrastructure in general.  Then, when all those people move out, a whole bunch of houses will be dumped on the market with nobody to live in them, and the public services, which were over-capacity before, will become under-capacity.  And local businesses, which may have blossomed during the "boom," will find their customer-base cut in half.  I'm not saying that these issues represent an insurmountable obstacle, but I am saying that this is an issue that needs to be addressed in some way -- not ignored.

And yes, there will be an environmental impact.  Scrubbers are nice, but they do not get rid of 100% of the toxic particulates in the stacks, particularly not at start-up, shut-down, or in situations where (for whatever reason) the scrubbers are being bi-passed.  And that still doesn't address what happens to the residue after the trash is burned.  Again, these issues do not necessarily mean that the plant is a bad idea. But the community has the right to be kept fully informed of both the environmental impact and the economic impact of the proposed plant, weigh the impacts against the potential benefits, and make a fully informed decision.  

The recent article in the Record-Times, unfortunately, doesn't help in that regard.  It reads like it was copied verbatim from a Company press release.

The toxic stuff as you put it is contained by the use of scrubber technology they take the bad out of the stack gas, the housing bubble don't get caught with your pants down, don't buy a house and deal in property or buy it now and then sell it at the prime, I don't believe that the construction force for this will be even close to what the Wheatland plant had it won't be nearly as big and it's a much smaller project, plus maybe you could get them to take the town of Guernsey's trash for free you could save money by not having TDS Haul it away, think of the positive not the down sides, it's good for the local economy. 

I'm a bit surprised that Wheaterville isn't taking a hard look at the Waste to Energy plant that is being proposed in Gurnsey.  Not necessarily opposing it, but at least asking the tough questions that the traditional media seem to be ignoring.  Some of these questions include.

1.  The fact that the byproduct of waste-to-energy plants is highly toxic, both in terms of what is released into the air and the ash that is left behind.  What is going to happen with this stuff?  Are the people of Gurnsey being kept fully informed of the environmental impact? 

2.  Remember what happened when they built the power plant in Wheatland?  A whole bunch of people moved into town to build it, and there was a housing bubble.  As housing prices went up, so too did property taxes.  This meant locals were paying higher taxes, but it also meant that local governments (city, county, and school district) got more in revenue, and came to be used to that extra revenue even though it was only temorpory.  The same thing happened to local businesses.  Then, when the construction was over, all those people moved out, leaving behind a relitavely small crew to operate the plant.  The town was plunged into a recession.  Tax revenue plummeted from its prior state, and the local governments didn't know what it them.  Meanwhile, people discovered that they can neither sell nor rent the house they bought at housing-bubble prices. 

Growth is a good, necessary thing, but it has to be managed properly.  How is this being managed?  Is this being managed?

Hey Owen the VA van is here every Wednesday at the PCFD 1F training Facility

Your damn right it is!

Hey Outsider! Is your ticket out of here a "One Way" ticket? Sure hope so.

Oh, I won't be taking anyone with me from here, because I have no use for anyone in this town.  You people are nothing but a bunch of duds.

See Ya Outsider! I will not be missing you! Hey! see if Owen will go with you. Ha Ha!

Ha ha!  So true.  I've said that for years, and that's why I'm leaving.  This place is like punishment.

I came across the Platte county school district web page and found it laughable. "preparing children for the 21st century" and "our vision is to prepare children to become citizens for the 21st century workplace" that will include many gays, in industry and corporations and Gay generals in the military, also blacks, asians, different cultures, countries and languages---the world and nation are light years ahead of Wheatland's best intentions.

The tired men (Joe Fabian, Lee Dunham, Kelly Tyson) reminded me of a bloated politburo in a communist type country---lets just do it the same old way---try and oppress and hold the people down!  I feel the Denver post editorial by Susan Greene said it best when she described some of the board members as "Dolts" and the Casper Star Trib editorial said some of the boards actions were "Foolish."

I DIDNT KNOW WHERE TO POST THIS BUT I WANTED TO GET THE WORD OUT.  I LEARNED FROM THE PATIENT REP AT THE CHEYENNE VAMC THAT WHEATLAND WILL HAVE A VA HEALTH VAN AT THE ARMORY BEGINNING SOMETIME IN JAN 2010. FOR MORE INFO 1-888-483-9127 EXT: 3816.