S.E.A.L.

From the Skagway News, April 12, 2013

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The Skagway Borough Assembly on April 4 unanimously adopted a solid waste and recycling management plan that will eventually create a recycling center, a compost center and a solid waste transfer facility while planning for the eventual closure of the incinerator. SCS Engineers, the company contracted to consult on Skagway’s solid waste program, determined that recycling, composting and shipping garbage out of Skagway by water would be cheaper than burning garbage in the incinerator. According to the resolution, SCS Engineers determined that the municipality pays an average of $474.07 per ton of garbage burned in the incinerator where the cost to ship garbage out would be $158 per ton. “(Recycling) will probably pay for itself,” said Assemblyman Steve Burnham Jr., liaison to Skagway’s ad hoc Recycling Committee. “The incinerator is what’s losing us money, so just recycling and composting doesn’t help us if we don’t cease using the incinerator or cutting back on the burns.” Even though the plan suggests regular usage of the incinerator be stopped by 2014, Mayor Stan Selmer asked Burnham if he would consider waiting until 2015, as the mayor would like to look at the logistics for turning it into a biomass generator. “White Pass currently has a large stack of ties that isn’t the kind that has to be shipped out,” Selmer said, adding that the heat generated from burning the ties would enough to produce electricity for the burn and also provide power back to the grid. Also included in the resolution were a set of goals which are: submitting a request for proposals to initiate negotiations with a solid waste/recyclables service provider for the transport and processing of recyclable and solid waste not recycled or composted, recycling 50 percent of the waste produced within the municipality by the end of 2015 and composting 50 percent of organic waste produced within the municipality by the end of 2016.

 

By: Katie Emmets