An article published this week gives more details about the trash coming to Chester from New York City.

As you may recall, about a year ago, Chester City Council approved Covanta to build a facility on their site to accommodate New York City trash that will be sent to Wilmington, Delaware by rail in containers. Those containers of trash will be transferred onto trucks and driven to Chester. Once here, Covanta will empty the containers and burn the trash in their incinerator.

What wasn’t very clear to me was Covanta’s claim that they weren’t going to burn more trash than they burned before making this deal with New York City.

I still can’t say that I totally understand the math, but here are some facts you should be aware of:

  • Covanta has contracted a 20-year $2.8 billion contract to take up to 800,000 tons of trash per year from New York City which will be divided evenly between Chester and Niagara Falls, NY.
  • The rail spur isn’t set up in Niagara Falls yet, so the trash will first come to Chester.
  • One of two Marine Transfer Stations in NYC is still being developed (despite major protest in Manhattan) which is delaying the project.
  • Covanta Chester has been receiving up to 360,000 tons a year from New York State, which didn’t include any trash from New York City (if I understand this correctly).
  • Covanta Chester has a capacity to burn 3,510 tons/day (1,281,150 tons/year).
  • Even without New York City trash, between 2004-2013 Covanta averaged 92% capacity, but only 75% during the first quarter of 2014.

It appears Covanta Chester has bitten off more than it can chew. Mathmatically, they don’t have the capacity to burn all the trash they currently burn on average and take on another 400,000 tons from New York City (or more depending on when Niagara Falls gets on board).

To resolve this dilemma, I imagine Covanta Chester will burn at 100% capacity as much as they can and transfer any excess trash to their other facilities. It would make sense to expect them to look for ways to bypass Wilmington and create a rail spur in Chester (since the trains pass right through here anyway). That way, they can easily unload the containers in their newly approved facility and send trucks out of Chester full of trash to their other facilities.

Regardless of how all the logistics are worked out, two things will be occuring in Chester for sure. Covanta will probably be burning trash ‘balls-to-the-wall’ on most days here in Chester and there’s a likely chance that unburned trash will be arriving in the city destined to be trucked out to other locations.

If you didn’t already know, Covanta Chester is the largest trash burning incinerator in the nation. According to the EPA, they’ve been fined 11 times in the past 5 years.

Is anyone convinced they are capable of lowering the risk of violations while increasing the rate of burning at plant capacity over a sustained period of time?