CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – “The best solution to the garbage problem in the province.”
This, notwithstanding earlier pronouncements from Greenpeace of it being an “incinerator in disguise” and therefore a violation of the Clean Air Act.
On Wednesday, Gov. Lilia “Nanay Baby” Pineda and Lubao Mayor Mylyn Pineda-Cayabyab signed a memorandum of agreement with James Mackay, chairman of the Pampanga Green Management Inc. (PGMI) and the MacKay Green Energy Inc. for the establishment of a US$63-million facility that will convert the province’s garbage into electricity.
The facility will not entail any cash-out from the provincial government while the Lubao municipality will provide the site for it at its central materials recovery facility in Barangay Sta. Catalina.
The facility is expected to be completed within four months from the signing of the agreement.
Through the process dubbed as “treating metropolitan solid waste and using the refuse derived fiber to produce renewable energy,” 800 metric tons of garbage a day will go through combustion to generate 22 megawatts of electricity, enough to energize 110,000 house holds at the rate of one megawatt for every 5,000 households.
No toxic gases
“With combustion at 1,200 to 1,800 degrees centigrade, the facility produces no toxic gases,” Mat Evans of MacKay Green Energy Inc. said, countering Greenpeace claims that the waste-to-energy facilities are “incinerators in disguise.”
In an earlier statement sent to Punto!, Von Hernandez od Greenpeace said: “The Clean Air Act of 1999 explicitly prohibits the incineration of municipal waste, and the proponent is using clever semantic subterfuge (i.e. characterizing their technology as gasification, pyrolisis, or plasma ars) to try to exempt their proposed facility from the ban.”
“They will claim that their technology is state of the art and without emissions. I find such spectacular claims hard to believe. While there may be state of the art incinerators, there is no such thing as a pollution-free incinerator,” Hernandez emphasized.”
“The combustion of waste especially chlorine containing materials like plastics creates cancer-causing dioxins and furans, liberates heavy metals into the air, essentially converting a waste problem into a formidable toxics pollution problem which will threaten the communities around the proposed facility,” he furthered.
MacKay has insisted that the facility produces “no gases or subsidiary wastes that may be harmful to people” and that “the technologies for the combustion turbines are eco-friendly.”
“With our system, there will be no longer any need for landfills. With our facility you can be guaranteed to be safe from any leachate, which is very hazardous. Methane issues will no longer be a problem,” he said.
Warned Hernandez however: “The Department of the Environment and Natural Resources and the Pampanga provincial government should be cautious and not fall into this trap. Under the Clean Air Act, the public can take them to court for sabotaging and violating the provisions of the law.”
MacKay Green Energy’s venture in Pampanga is considered as a flagship project “to eventually make the country as the springboard to supply its technology in the Asia-Pacific region.”
