In the late 1980's Onondaga County government agreed on a plan to deal with the community's mounting garbage crisis. Part of this agreement was construction of a Waste-to-Energy Facility (WTE). 

The Waste-to-Energy Facility located off Route 481 in Jamesville is where Onondaga County's non-recyclable trash is converted into energy; proceeds from the energy sale help fund OCRRA's extensive recycling programs.

County government tasked OCRRA, an independent public benefit corporation created by the New York State Legislature, with the responsibility of obtaining permits for the construction of the facility. They selected Covanta Energy from Fairfield, New Jersey to build and operate the WTE facility.

WTE is the process where trash is used as the fuel to heat tubes of water in a boiler. The water is heated until it turns into steam, which is then used to drive a turbine generator that produces electricity. To see an animated video on how the WTE process works, click here.

This photo shows the WTE facility's air pollution control devices, including scrubbers, (which neutralize acid gases and control mercury), baghouses, (which remove particulate matter) and the continuous emission monitoring system (CEMS).

WTE is viewed as more beneficial  than burying raw garbage because

it is a form of recycling trash into energy, and the solid waste is

reduced in volume by 90%. This

saves valuable landfill space and

uses a renewable source of energy

to serve between 30,000 and 35,000 homes in Onondaga County with electricity.

Since beginning operation in late1994, our community’s WTE Facility has processed over 4.6 million tons of garbage and has produced nearly3 billion

kilowatt-hours of electricity for Central New York. Over the past decade, the facility has saved more than 5.5 million barrels of oil that would have otherwise been consumed to produce an equivalent amount of electrical power.

The WTE Facility contains $15 million in state-of-the-art pollution control systems and meets all federal and state air emission standards. The air permit under which the facility must operate is one of the strictest permits in the country.

Since its start-up in 1994 the facility's environmental performance has exceeded expectations. In fact, POWER Magazine ranked the Onondaga WTE Facility as one of the top five renewable energy facilities in the world! Check out the article about our WTE facility featured in POWER's December 2008 issue.

The facility operates according to environmental requirements established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. To understand this more fully, you can review the results of the annual residue and emissions tests conducted each year in our WTE Facility Operations Reports. A summary of these annual reports can be found in WTE Stack Test Data and Summary Charts.