Governments that bought into incinerators must now take garbage from other jurisdictions, at cut rate prices, to feed their incinerators. These are bogus claims. Then the market price for disposal plunged. It was supposed to work the other way around,' says Donald Silverson, Montgomery County's trash chief. Even Gloomier Things could go from bad to worse for the economics of incineration.
Incinerators are major polluters.
In essence, an incinerator is a machine that manufactures toxic air pollution out of relatively benign raw materials. Bringing most incinerators into compliance with the Clean Air Act of 1990, will be costly. Electric utilities are fighting back against a federal law that requires them to buy electricity from incinerators at above-market prices. That's why our rates are so high. Utilities are lobbying hard to get out from under the requirement to pay high prices for NUG electricity.