The precautionary principle and RDF

I'm ready to put up a Neighbors Against the Burner sign in my yard, because I'm convinced that burning refuse-derived fuel (RDF) is a bad deal – economically and on environmental/health grounds. On the other hand, I want to be clear that this doesn't mean I'm against any power plant going up across the freeway at Rock-Tenn. I'm not. I believe that a power plant burning non-RDF biomass fuel can and should be built to provide affordable energy for Rock-Tenn's recycling operation, and possibly also for district heating in some part of the Midway neighborhood.

For background on Rock-Tenn and why it needs a new power source, see
Re-fueling Rock Tenn: environmental and economic challenges
Who's on First? Keeping track of the players
Following the money: who pays and who profits
Garbage or green energy: a look at the issues around RDF

The economic down-side of RDF should be easy to see. For starters, consider the fact that the current RDF production plant in Newport has been subsidized by taxpayer dollars since its beginning. Or the fact that the RDF fuel produced in Newport is so undesirable that the plant has to pay Xcel Energy to take it and burn it. If taxpayers are going to pay millions of dollars in subsidies every year, I'd rather see the money go to paying farmers to grow prairie grass for fuel and/or to increasing the Twin Cities' recycling percentage, currently about 40 percent to something closer to the 60 percent recycling/composting for municipal waste reached by the Netherlands and Austria. or the 69 percent recycling/composting rate achieved this year by San Francisco.

Health and environmental issues are harder to pin down. Hours of discussion at public meetings and hundreds of pages of reports do not conclusively prove that burning RDF causes cancer or heart attacks or other health problems. Note the weasel word: conclusively.

The British Society for Ecological Medicine's report says:

There are no certainties in pinning specific health effects on incineration: the report makes that clear. However this is largely because of the complexity of exposure of the human race to many influences.

Cancer may take 10 or 20 years to develop. Birth defects may have multiple causes. Some people are more vulnerable to contaminants than others. Some contaminants build up in the body over time. Some contaminants interact with others in ways that have not yet been identified. People move, so studies of public health around incinerators do not find all of the exposed population.

So scientists speak cautiously. The evidence linking municipal waste incinerators to health problems "is consistent with" causality for adult and childhood cancer and birth defects. The evidence "suggests" a wide range of illnesses connected with municipal waste incinerators.

The British medical report goes on to discuss the precautionary principle.

This principle involves acting in the face of uncertain knowledge about risks from environmental exposures. This means public health measures should be taken in response to limited, but plausible and credible, evidence of likely and substantial harm.

When it comes to RDF, plenty of evidence points to probably dangers. The garbage that goes into the system includes a wide variety of toxic materials. Burning RDF has produced fine particulate emissions (a health hazard in themselves), as well as toxic metals and hazardous organic compounds. Burning RDF also leaves a residue of ash, which is classified as hazardous waste and has to be put somewhere.

Proponents of RDF talk about new emissions control systems and about gasification. Of course, they also say that current systems work just fine.

I don't buy the arguments. If ever there was a case for the application of the precautionary principle, RDF incineration is that case. We do not need to add more fine particulate emissions to the Twin Cities' already-polluted air. We do not need to risk emissions of heavy metals and toxic organic compounds. We do not need to make our city the laboratory for conclusively proving –twenty or thirty years from now – that RDF incineration actually causes pulmonary or cardiac illnesses or cancer or birth defects.

Time and time again it has been found that what we did not know about chemicals proved to be far more important than what we did know. As an incinerator generates hundreds of chemicals, including new compounds, we can expect many unpleasant future surprises.

There are alternatives to RDF. We do not need to take a chance with the health of our cities and of future generations.