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Show State may 'burn ' county residents By JUDY JENSEN AssL Managing Editor The recent discharge of unacceptable unaccep-table levels of hydrochloric acid (HQ) at the Davis County "Bum Plant" may require an expenditure of $5 million to upgrade the facility, which could raise tipping fees, again. Marvin Maxell, assistant director of the Utah Bureau of Air Quality, said the December test which showed the plant releasing 41 pounds of HCL per hour was two and one half times the legal limit of 1 6 pounds per hour. The state has met with the operator, Davis Energy Systems Co. (DESCO) and the company has agreed to present a proposal April 5 which will outline its plan to present pre-sent documentation to explain the December reading. "There is still a question of how much they can do and what they have done to eliminate the problem," prob-lem," Maxell said. He added the "whole key to the matter" is how much plastic is in the trash that is burned at the plant. "They do not have any data that tells the composition of the trash. They told us they don't have the data, but they'll tell us how they can get it," Maxell said. One way of "getting" the data would be to run the plant for one day without any pollution controls and the next day with pollution controls con-trols to find out if the plant is in fact reducing HC1 levels by 50 percent. The amount that was agreed to in the original permit. Maxell said that although this may be a good way to gather data, he agreed it would 'not be the best thing" for county residents to run the plant without controls. He added add-ed this is not the first time the bum plant has failed the air quality test. He blamed the problems of the bum plant on "the politics behind the thing." "It was sold to the public with no controls," Maxell said. He explained ex-plained that the plant, designed by Katy Seghers of Belgium, was purchased pur-chased by Davis County. "They opted for a lime injection system to control pollution instead of a dry scrubber. That system has never worked properly," Maxell said. He said a major problem being addressed at this time is "whether or not the data used originally to predict the amount of pollution was accurate." Maxell said the plant started operation based on "guesswork" regarding the pounds per hour of HC1 that would be emitted from the stack. "If those original assumptions assump-tions were correct, then the plant is not functioning correctly. If they were wrong, then the state is going to require that the plant install a dry scrubber which would reduce the HC1 by 80 percent compared to The current 50 percent requirement," Maxell said. He added that the cost for the scrubber has been estimated by DESCO at $5 million. "If we find out that the plant is not reducing HC1 emissions by 50 percent, and if we have to do anything to change the approval order, that will open up the entire process to a public hearing for approval ap-proval to operate," Maxell said. He said the state does not want to shut the bum plant down. "I'm convinced that incineration is the way to go. I wish I could say that Davis County is a good example of how to incinerate, but they've had problems since the beginning. The bulk of those problems have been political which have led to wrong decisions. They should have had a scrubber in the beginning," Maxell said. Davis County Environmental Health Director Richard Harvey agreed there has been "a lot of rancor ran-cor and animosity," surrounding the recent test results. He expressed frustration over the fact that he has not yet been able to obtain a copy of the test results. He added if the results are as they have been represented, there must be some changes made. "But it is ridiculous to put straight weight requirements on a garbage plant. We're burning heterogeneous fuels. The content changes constantly. If we're taking care of 50 percent of the HC1 then we are in compliance," Harvey said. ' -..... , . |