After more than two years of planning and $4.9 million invested, Alpine Energy hopes to break ground this year on a garbage-burning power plant on St. Croix and two plants to convert trash into fuel, one for St. Croix and one for St. Thomas.
Donald Hurd, vice president of the Colorado-based energy company, told the St. Croix Rotary Club Thursday he expects to apply for a Coastal Zone Management permit in just a few days.
The project is similar to the one that was blocked two months ago by the Senate with one exception: the new plant won’t be burning pet coke.
The plan to supplement the palletized trash with petroleum coke raised a public outrage that the Senate could not ignore when it voted down a lease for the plant’s property.
The new project, which aims to build one power plant rather than two, does not envision using the controversial material, according to Hurd.
“We do not intend to take delivery of pet coke at the facility,” he said.
He cautioned that the permit applications and plans will continue to show pet coke as a fuel, but that using it is not in the plan. According to Hurd, the groups financing the plant insist that it be listed on the chance that the desired fuel, pelletized garbage, is not available. It is, he said, “a pinhole risk,” and he said he negotiated language that would limit the amount Alpine would ever have to use, even under the “extraordinary circumstance” that enough waste fuel wasn’t available.
“I can’t envision how we would ever run out of waste,” he said.
Hurd added that when the project was originally conceived, it was planned as a refuse-only facility.
He also said the plant will be able to process “fuel crops,” and the company stands ready to assist local growers with federal programs encouraging such agriculture. Woody varieties of cane, which contain more pulp and less liquid, grow quickly and are well suited to local conditions, he said, and could create a money-making crop for local growers.
The Alpine project will cost about $210 million to build and create about 150 construction jobs, according to Hurd. When it goes online, which he predicted would be in 2013, it will employ almost 100 people, 60 on St. Croix at the “refuse-derived fuel plant” and the power plant, and another 35 or so on St. Thomas at the fuel plant there. Fuel pellets from St. Thomas would be shipped to the St. Croix power plant.
When the plant goes online, the V.I. Waste Management Authority will pay Alpine to take the municipal waste it produces. Alpine will grind and shred the waste, removing glass and metals for recycling. The remaining material will be sterilized, killing the bacteria, which produces the smell associated with trash.
“There will be no odor from our plant,” he said.
The sterilized waste will then be compressed into hard, dry pellets that will be burned in the plant, generating electricity that will be sold to the Water and Power Authority at a lower rate than it costs for the utility to generate the energy itself.
The project will have to go back to the Senate, but Hurd said he’s optimistic the changes will win it a positive vote.
The waste-to-energy plant will take pressure off the territory’s landfills, allowing for their eventual closure, and will provide energy at a lower cost than ratepayers currently have to pay.
Hurd said there are hundreds of such plants in operation around the world, but they are less prevalent in the states, where land is much more plentiful. In the states, people are still happy throwing their trash into landfills without worrying about the long-term costs.
“This is a solution that’s globally accepted, but in the states they still put it in the ground,” he said.
He also said plans have changed for the location of the St. Croix project. It is now planned for a 16-acre parcel south of the original Renaissance Park site, but it won’t affect traffic flow, and it will be outside the flight path at Henry E. Rohlsen Airport.
