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.
View a short video on how Covanta turns non-recyclable trash into energy at one of their many WTE facilities.
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 particluate 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
about 36,000 homes in Onondaga County with electricity.
Since beginning operation
in late 1994, our community’s WTE Facility has processed over
4.6 million tons of garbage and has produced nearly 3 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.
