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Show Gwmp 'Blasts' Gm4MgFlmt By MARK FOTHERINGHAM CLEARFIELD -- An air of quiet caution brooded over the Clearfield City Council meeting meet-ing last Tuesday night. A capacity crowd filed into the council chambers to hear a report re-port from the "Opposition Force" concerning the proposed prop-osed Davis County Resource Recovery Plant; or as Jim Hurst, head of the citizen's group called it, "the garbage dump in my front yard." THE SPECTATORS waited patiently as Police Chief Green plowed through his department's depart-ment's year-end statistical report. re-port. Still they waited as engineers en-gineers from Forsgren and Perkins Per-kins waded through a water study on Clearfield's water pressure problems. An hour passed before Mr. Hurst, Shirley Reed, and Hal Hallett, area residents, took the podium with a long list of reasons why Clearfield should oppose the building of the proposed "burn Plant." ACCORDING to their report, re-port, even if the burn plant is put into operation, landfills will still be necessary. Non-digestable Non-digestable material (trash that won't burn) and ash from the plant will continue to fill space at Davis County's two refuse dumps. The remaining service life for the Bay Area Refuse Dump (BARD) is estimated at about 14 more years; 37 years remain for the North Davis Refuse Dump (NDRD). THE OPPOSING group conceded con-ceded that the burn plant would increase the service life of the dumps. However, it only postpones the inevitable need to establish new dump sites, they said. Several complex elements of the financing plan for the plant were questioned by the citizen's group. They claimed the financial risk for the plant would be placed on taxpayers rather than on the developers. ONE COMPLAINT, reiterated reiter-ated several times by the opposition oppo-sition group, was that the timetable time-table for the plant calls for cities to sign the contracts before be-fore any firm costs are set. Mayor Neldon E. Hamblin assured the spectators, however, that no blank contracts con-tracts would be signed and that all costs would have to be known before any action is taken. The opposition report compared com-pared estimated operating costs for landfills with those of a resource recovery plant. They said that over the next 27 years, BARD and NDRD would cost approximately $22. 1 million. This includes the cost of replacing the BARD site after its service life expires. ex-pires. THE BURN plant, however, will cost about $125 million to operate, said the report. Even with the sale of steam to Hill Air Force Base, revenue will not even begin to offset operating operat-ing and maintenance costs for seven years. HAFB has not yet signed any contracts to buy energy produced by the plant. The report re-port questioned whether the base ever would buy steam in light of what Mrs. Reed called "an electricity glut." The base is obligated by the Federal Government to buy the least expensive type of energy available, avail-able, said Mr. Hurst. THE REPORT explained that for the plant to be cost efficient it would not only have to sell all of the steam and electricity elec-tricity it produced, but would have to run at capacity seven days per week. 24 hours per day. It will take at least five years at current population growth rates, however, before county residents will be discarding dis-carding enough refuse to run the plant at capacity. The opposition group also discussed several environmental environ-mental aspects of the burn plant. They voiced concern over the fact that there had been on full EPA study on the effects of the plant. Only an "assessment" had been made, they said. DESPITE earlier reports that similar plants in Europe are clean, quiet operations, the group was unconvinced there would be no added noise, smell or litter problems in the vicinity vicin-ity of the plant. The group noted that property prop-erty values for residences adjacent adja-cent to the site would plum-mett plum-mett along with the potential for future development in the area. Add this to a 12 percent increase in area traffic (consisting (con-sisting mostly of garbage trucks) and the result is a lower quality of life for residents, they said. THE GROUP also said that the site now under consideration considera-tion (on Utah Department of Transportation land just north of Highway 193) was ranked fourth in a feasability study of five potential sties. The group concluded by asking the city council to abandon aban-don consideration of the burn plant due to the risks involved with financing uncertain revenue, re-venue, and the unanswered questions of costs. THE MASS exodus of spectators spec-tators after the presentation indicated in-dicated that the crowd had heard enough. Several people complimented Mr. Hurst on the report on their way out, leaving three tired reporters and a handful of citizens to muddle through the remaining items on the council agenda. |
