Bettering Plant Operation NESWC-Nothing Ever Succeeds Without Cooperation

摘要

The twenty-three member communities of the North East Solid Waste Committee will be paying over $120 per ton in FY 2001 to dispose of their non-recycled municipal solid waste. This is very likely the highest tip fee in the country. The bad news is that it will continue to grow, reaching as high as $160 per ton before the contract ends in 2005. The good news is that, without an aggressive effort over several years to reduce those costs, that cost would have been higher and could have grown to over $250 per ton by 2005. The NESWC Board of Directors has, over the course of the past seven years, implemented a multi-faceted program to reduce the environmental and economic burden associated with managing the municipal solid wastes generated in the member communities. The program has included a series of novel approaches to obtaining negotiating leverage and support from diverse stakeholders to reduce the cost and implement innovative programs to help reduce the amount and toxicity of waste requiring disposal. What makes this particularly significant is that it was done on a regional basis, involved interaction with a broad, diverse group of stakeholders at the local, state and federal level and required the use of a wide array of change-inducing tools, including arbitration and litigation, to achieve the results. The North East Solid Waste Committee (NESWC) is a coalition of twenty-three Massachusetts communities, with a total population of almost 500,000 residents, formed in the 1980's to address solid waste disposal issues. These communities deliver the non-recycled portion of their waste stream to a 1500 TPD waste to energy facility owned and operated by Massachusetts Refuse Tech, Inc., an indirect subsidiary of Waste Management, Inc. The implementation of the strategic plan by the NESWC Board of Directors required direct involvement of key project stakeholders, including citizens, all levels of municipal, state and federal government, the media and the private sector. The overall goal of the strategic program continues to be to help reduce the environmental and economic impact associated with provision of integrated municipal waste management services by the 23 NESWC communities. This paper addresses the strategy involved in reducing the costs associated with the ongoing operation and retrofitting of the 1500 TPD regional waste to energy facility. Fundamentally, the strategy was to identify opportunities to reduce costs; increase revenues; and obtain assistance from the state as well as the federal government, while continuing to manage the municipal solid waste in an integrated, environmentally sound manner.