A smaller deal with Alpine Energy Group to produce power just on St. Croix from the territory’s trash and other materials—but not petroleum coke—is in the works in the near future, top officials at the V.I. Waste Management Authority said Thursday.
WMA and the V.I. Water and Power Authority had negotiated a plan with Alpine to have the territory’s trash converted into refuse-derived fuel pellets, or RDF, then burned, along with petroleum coke from the Hovensa refinery, to generate electricity.
The goal was to expand the territory’s energy base away from its current exclusive reliance on pricy fuel oil, while disposing of trash cheaply and allowing WMA to close the territory’s two landfills.
But, in the face of stiff environmental opposition, the V.I. Legislature voted down a lease for the St. Thomas RDF facility in March. Senators and residents objected principally to using the very inexpensive but potentially dirty petroleum coke as a fuel.
At the WMA board meeting Thursday, Executive Director May Cornwall said Alpine, WAPA, environmental groups and WMA have been discussing a scaled-back plan.
"We would have a station on St. Thomas to produce RDF and bring it over to St. Croix to displace all of the petroleum coke for WAPA," Cornwall said. WAPA is still working on the new proposal with Alpine, and details have not been finalized yet, she said.
Meanwhile, both landfills are still on track to close, and a transfer facility to bail and wrap St. Croix garbage is moving forward, he said.
Originally, the St. Croix plants were slated to go near the Molasses Pier on the south shore, but environmental groups have raised issues with the location, Cornwall said after the meeting.
So now, WMA is looking into building both an RDF-processing plant and the power plant just south of the Anguilla landfill, on a spit of land formerly used for scrap metal.
"The project for St. Croix is basically the same as it always was, with the only difference being there is no pet coke," she said.
The proposed system can accommodate a variety of fuels, Cornwall said, adding that WMA is discussing opportunistic fuels—ranging from woody debris left after storms to possibly paying farmers to raise "biomass crops" to burn, and maybe even tan-tan.
"The EPA did a very limited study a few years ago on the high BTU value of tan-tan," she said.
Whatever the final details of any plan, the bottom line for WMA is finding a way to dispose of the territory’s trash in an environmentally friendly way and at a reasonable cost, she said.
In other business, Chief Operating Officer Steve Aubin detailed continuing work to add new pumps throughout the sewer system, so all pump stations have redundant pumps and backups. These efforts were prompted because pump failures at St. Croix’s Figtree pump station earlier this year caused sewage to be pumped into the sea, leading the Environmental Protection Agency to go to court to press WMA to fix the situation.
"The point is to have one spare for each pump station sitting in warehouse so in the event of a problem, we just swap it," Aubin said. Meanwhile, each station would have redundant pumps already in place, so if a pump fails, the other pumps can handle the entire load while it is taken offline and replaced, he said.
"With this done, we do not anticipate another incident like at the Figtree station to happen at any pump station on all three islands?" Dodson James, the board chairman asked. Cornwall said yes.
"Under normal operation, we have already installed two spares; and with the plan, there is another spare, so you can just flip one and switch it out," she said.
To speed up parts and equipment shipping, WMA is also working directly with U.S. suppliers, she said. Some repair and shipping delays have occurred because industrial suppliers in the states frequently route all service and supply for the Caribbean region through a central office in Puerto Rico, adding layers of bureaucracy and delays, she said.
Board members present were James, Winston Adams, J. Brion Morrisette, Darryl Smalls and Stephen Jones. Llewellyn Reed was absent.