Crains New York - August 27, 2012 - (Page 3)

JUICE BOX: Crane operator Eddie Santos uses a 16-ton claw to aerate trash at Covanta’s Hempstead, L.I., facility before burning it as fuel to generate electricity. Burn it The city’s got a garbage disposal problem, but a plan to turn waste to energy needs converts BY ANDREW J. HAWKINS Almost 50,000 tons of city trash is thrown away every day. That’s 12.5 pounds of garbage for each man, woman and child who lives here. Banana peels. Box springs. Bulky construction material. Everything. And the city’s running out of places to bury it. Staten Island’s Fresh Kills landfill is long-filled (see In the Boroughs, this page). And the states that accept the city’s trash—Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia—are running out of room themselves. Mayor Michael Bloomberg sees a solution. He wants to turn a portion of the city’s garbage into energy, in hopes of reducing truck traffic and the reliance on out-of-state landfills. But the idea—and the company that may be best suited to make it happen—is running into trash politics. New Jersey-based waste-to-energy outfit Covanta operates seven facilities that convert trash into heat and electricity for thousands of homes and businesses in New York state, where it employs about 500 people. In early August, Covanta was among a handful of companies that responded to the facility, which would handle 450 tons of trash a day. While that’s just a drop in the city’s garbage bucket, winning the bid would be a boon for the wasteto-energy industry’s image and an important step toward countering criticism that it does not use legitimate environmentally sustainable technology, even though it is widely used in Europe. “We’ve been at this longer than anybody, and we have more assets and experience than anybody, and we’ve developed more projects than anybody,” said Steve Weber, vice president of business development at Covanta. “Having a technology is great, and it can be the best technology in the world. But you have to be able to get a deal done, and there’s a lot that goes into getting a deal done.” The company would seem like a shoo-in—400,000 tons of ManhatSee WASTE-TO-ENERGY on Page 44 Huge park is surprisingly contentious BY HILARY POTKEWITZ Let’s be frank. Turning a place called—of all things—Fresh Kills, a site once infamous as the world’s largest garbage dump, into a park three times the size of Central Park was always going to be tough. In fact, it will take an estimated 30 years and $140 million to pull off. Even 11 years after the dump closed and the transformation process began, most people still agree on that. “There’s been some skepticism of how you can take a landfill and make into a park, and the answer is ‘very carefully,’ ” said Eloise Hirsh,administrator of the park under the city’s Manhattanbased Department of Parks and YES, STATEN ISLAND: The former Fresh Kills dump, renamed Fishkills. Green it Covanta gasifies 400,000 tons of waste in Newark. Critics doubt clean-air claims Bloomberg administration’s request for proposals to construct and operate the city’s first waste-to-energy IN THE BOROUGHS STATEN ISLAND Recreation.The agency renamed the park Freshkills, all one word. So far, there’s been a lot of progress. Most notably, the site is deemed safe—having been capped and sealed per strict environmental regulations. But what is surprising is how much heated debate and out-and-out trash-talking it continues to spark over everything from home rule versus outside management, to the proper ratio of recreational space to nature preserve. And then there’s the question of roads. Staten Island residents and their See SPARKS FLY on Page 12 August 27, 2012 | Crain’s New York Business | 3 buck ennis Talking trash

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Crains New York - August 27, 2012

Crains New York - August 27, 2012
Contents
In the Boroughs
In the Markets
The Insider
Real Estate Deals
Business People
Corporate Ladder
Opinion
Greg David
Small Business
From Around the City
Stats and the City
Classifieds
Source Lunch
Out and About
Snaps

Crains New York - August 27, 2012