On Wednesday, March 20, 2013, I testified at the Rhode Island General Assembly, at a hearing of the Environment Committee, against Bill S-728, which would remove a long-standing statutory ban on the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation (RIRRC) putting incineration into its long-range plan.

At the hearing, a staff person from RIRRC testified that there are two reasons why it had asked that this bill be introduced:

• To allow RIRRC “to discuss and look at” incineration; and

• So that RIRRC “has all the tools in its tool-kit.”

Neither reason stands up to scrutiny.

As for allowing RIRRC “to discuss and look at incineration,” RIRRC is already doing that. In fact, at the very same hearing on March 20, RIRRC Executive Director Mike McConnell gave a long and detailed (and excellent) PowerPoint presentation that showed that RIRRC has extensively examined and studied incinerators elsewhere in New England and, indeed, all over the country. As Director McConnell testified, RIRRC’s extensive examination of incineration all over the country revealed that incineration of municipal waste is uneconomic and polluting. The point is that existing law already allows RIRRC to think about, look at, and study incineration – as it has been doing for years. S-728 does not permit study; instead, S-728 permits RIRRC to put incineration into its plan. This makes no sense, as actual incineration is banned elsewhere in the RIRRC statute. It simply makes no sense to enact a statute permitting the RIRRC to put into its long-range plan a method of handling trash that is expressly prohibited elsewhere in the very same statute!

As for allowing RIRRC “to have all tools in its tool-kit,” this is simply incorrect. It is the job of the General Assembly to determine and announce the public policy of the state. The General Assembly has done so with regard to incineration. The General Assembly has made an express, explicit determination that incineration at the landfill is banned, in part, because of “the myriad of over four hundred (400) toxic pollutants including lead, mercury, dioxins and acid gasses known to be emitted by solid waste incinerators [and] the known and unknown threats posed by solid waste incinerators to the health and safety of Rhode Islanders, particularly children . . . .” (R. I. Gen. Laws § 23-19-3(15).) As I testified at the hearing on Wednesday, it is simply not true that the RIRRC must have all tools in its tool-kit. The General Assembly, in its role of determining public policy, has decided that certain dangerous and polluting tools will not be in the RIRRC’s tool-kit.

In my Senate testimony on Wednesday, I also referred to the fact that Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was driven into bankruptcy solely because of its “put-or-pay” contract with an incinerator operator. This is a link to an article (one of many) on that subject. The subtitle of the article sums it up nicely: “Harrisburg’s waste to energy to bankruptcy saga.”

We all know that Rhode Island’s economy is worse than that of many other states; one thing Rhode Island does not need is to court financial disaster be enabling incineration of municipal waste.

It has long been the public policy of Rhode Island that municipal waste shall not be incinerated. The main lesson from Wednesday’s hearing was that no sensible reason has been advanced for permitting RIRRC to put incineration into its long-range plan.

The short of it is that RIRRC should not put into its long-range, statutorily-mandated plan a disposal method that is expressly prohibited elsewhere in the very same statute.