Covanta Essex | |
---|---|
Country |
|
Location | Newark, New Jersey |
Coordinates | 40°44′18″N74°07′35″W / 40.73833°N 74.12639°W |
Status | Operational |
Commission date | 1990 |
Owner | Port Authority of New York and New Jersey |
Operator | Reworld |
Thermal power station | |
Primary fuel | Municipal waste |
Turbine technology | Incineration |
Power generation | |
Nameplate capacity | [1] |
The Essex County Resource Recovery Facility, also known as Covanta Essex, is a waste-to-energy incineration power station in Essex County, New Jersey, United States. Opened in 1990, it is owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) and operated by Reworld. It is located adjacent to the New Jersey Turnpike between Raymond Boulevard and the Passaic River in Newark. [2] [3] [4]
As of 2012, the facility processed 2,800 tons of municipal solid waste per day, its two generators producing approximately 65 megawatts of power. The facility burns garbage from the 22 municipalities of Essex County and from New York City's Manhattan Community Board Districts 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12. [5] [6] [7]
As of January 1, 2013 the PANYNJ gave Covanta control of the facility through 2032, with optional extension to 2052. As part of the agreement the New York City Department of Sanitation will continue to use about 50% of the plant's disposal capacity. Covanta agreed to invest $75 to $100 million for operational improvements, including a modern particulate emissions control system and a new recycling system for ferrous and non-ferrous metals. [8]
In June 2013, a refuelling station for trucks using compressed natural gas (CNG) opened at the facility. [9]
The facility has been a point of contention with residents of Newark, notably the Ironbound. [10] [11] A local community organizing and advocacy organization, the Ironbound Community Corporation (ICC), was concerned about air pollution emitted by the nearby garbage incinerator facility. Bright pink and purple fumes were often seen spewing from the facility but Covanta blamed a local hospital for improperly disposed medical waste. In summer 2019, ICC partnered with Earthjustice, a nonprofit public interest organization that litigates to protect the environment, and the Environmental Advocacy Clinic at Vermont Law School to take on Covanta by urging state officials to investigate. Covanta has been found many hundreds of times to exceed air pollution limits or to fail to abide by required safety regulations. Covanta eventually acknowledged that the fumes were produced by its burning of pesticides improperly disposed and agreed to new waste management procedures. [12]
Newark is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey, the county seat of Essex County, and a principal city of the New York metropolitan area. As of the 2020 census, the city's population was 311,549. The Population Estimates Program calculated a population of 304,960 for 2023, making it the 66th-most populous municipality in the nation.
Essex County is located in the northeastern part of the U.S. state of New Jersey, and is one of the centrally located counties in the New York metropolitan area. As of the 2020 census, the county was the state's second-most populous county, with a population of 863,728, its highest decennial count since the 1970 census and an increase of 79,759 (+10.2%) from the 2010 census count of 783,969. The county is part of the North Jersey region of the state.
Incineration is a waste treatment process that involves the combustion of substances contained in waste materials. Industrial plants for waste incineration are commonly referred to as waste-to-energy facilities. Incineration and other high-temperature waste treatment systems are described as "thermal treatment". Incineration of waste materials converts the waste into ash, flue gas and heat. The ash is mostly formed by the inorganic constituents of the waste and may take the form of solid lumps or particulates carried by the flue gas. The flue gases must be cleaned of gaseous and particulate pollutants before they are dispersed into the atmosphere. In some cases, the heat that is generated by incineration can be used to generate electric power.
The Ironbound is a neighborhood in the city of Newark in Essex County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It is a large working-class multi-ethnic community, covering about 4 square miles (10 km2). Historically, the area was called "Dutch Neck," "Down Neck," or simply "the Neck," for its location by a bend of the Passaic River. Part of Newark's East Ward, the Ironbound is directly east of Newark Penn Station and Downtown Newark, and south and west of the river. The neighborhood is connected by the Jackson Street Bridge over the river to Harrison and Kearny.
Newark Liberty International Airport Station is a railroad hub on the Northeast Corridor (NEC) in Newark, New Jersey. The station provides access to Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) via the AirTrain Newark monorail which connects the station to the airport's terminals and parking areas. The station is served by New Jersey Transit's (NJT) Northeast Corridor Line and North Jersey Coast Line and Amtrak's Northeast Regional and Keystone Service trains.
A materials recovery facility, materials reclamation facility, materials recycling facility or multi re-use facility is a specialized waste sorting and recycling system that receives, separates and prepares recyclable materials for marketing to end-user manufacturers. Generally, the main recyclable materials include ferrous metal, non-ferrous metal, plastics, paper, glass. Organic food waste is used to assist anaerobic digestion or composting. Inorganic inert waste is used to make building materials. Non-recyclable high calorific value waste is used to making RDF and SRF
Waste-to-energy (WtE) or energy-from-waste (EfW) refers to a series of processes designed to convert waste materials into usable forms of energy, typically electricity or heat. As a form of energy recovery, WtE plays a crucial role in both waste management and sustainable energy production by reducing the volume of waste in landfills and providing an alternative energy source.
South Kearny, also known as Kearny Point, is an industrial district and distinct area of the western part of Hudson County, New Jersey at the northern end of Newark Bay in the town of Kearny, New Jersey. It is on the larger peninsula once called New Barbadoes Neck, which also include the other Kearny districts of the Uplands and the Kearny Meadows. It has been known as Kearny Point and, along Droyer's Point in Jersey City, marks the mouth of the Hackensack River to the east. The Passaic River flows along its western border opposite a similarly industrial portion of the Ironbound district of Newark. Most of the point is part of Foreign-Trade Zone 49.
Reworld, formerly Covanta, is a private energy-from-waste and industrial waste management services company headquartered in Morristown, New Jersey. Most of its revenue comes from operating incineration facilities that serve a secondary purpose as power plants that burn trash as fuel. Reworld charges a fee for waste disposal and sells the electricity and metal slag produced from waste incineration.
Waste management in Japan today emphasizes not just the efficient and sanitary collection of waste, but also reduction in waste produced and recycling of waste when possible. This has been influenced by its history, particularly periods of significant economic expansion, as well as its geography as a mountainous country with limited space for landfills. Important forms of waste disposal include incineration, recycling and, to a smaller extent, landfills and land reclamation. Although Japan has made progress since the 1990s in reducing waste produced and encouraging recycling, there is still further progress to be made in reducing reliance on incinerators and the garbage sent to landfills. Challenges also exist in the processing of electronic waste and debris left after natural disasters.
Teesside Energy from Waste plant is a municipal waste incinerator and waste-to-energy power station, which provides 29.2 megawatts (MW) of electricity for the National Grid by burning 390,000 tonnes of household and commercial waste a year. It is located on the River Tees at Haverton Hill, east of Billingham in North East England. Developed and built by NEM, a subsidiary of Northumbrian Water, the initial plant replaced the Portrack Incinerator and opened in 1998. Subsequently, the facility became part of SITA, now Suez.
Port Jersey, officially the Port Jersey Port Authority Marine Terminal and referred to as the Port Jersey Marine Terminal, is an intermodal freight transport facility that includes a container terminal located on the Upper New York Bay in the Port of New York and New Jersey. The municipal border of the Hudson County cities of Jersey City and Bayonne runs along the long pier extending into the bay.
Riverbank Park is a park in the Ironbound section of Newark, Essex County, New Jersey, United States. The park was opened in 1910 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 16, 1998. It is the smallest and one of the most heavily used parks in the Essex County Park System.
The city of Newark, New Jersey, includes a large Portuguese-speaking population. Newark has been nicknamed "Little Portugal" due to its large number of Portuguese-speaking and Portuguese-descended people. Most Lusophone Americans in Newark live in the working-class neighborhood of Ironbound.
New York City's waste management system is a refuse removal system primarily run by the New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY). The department maintains the waste collection infrastructure and hires public and private contractors who remove the city's waste. For the city's population of more than eight million, The DSNY collects approximately eleven thousand tons a day of garbage, including compostable material and recycling.
The Delaware Valley Resource Recovery Facility is a trash incineration plant located in Chester, Pennsylvania. The waste-to-energy plant, which incinerates waste to generate power, was built and operated by Westinghouse from 1991 to 1997. It is currently operated by Reworld. a Morristown, New Jersey–based publicly traded industrial waste company, and has been criticized for the level of pollution it produces. The plant has the largest capacity of any waste-to-energy plant in the United States.
Gloucestershire Energy from Waste facility, also known as the Javelin Park Incinerator is an incinerator and energy-from-waste power station which produces 14.5MW of energy for the National Grid, by burning up to 190,000 tonnes of residual waste each year. The site is located adjacent to the M5 motorway, near junction 12 and to the south of Gloucester.
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The Hennepin Energy Recovery Center also called HERC is a waste-to-energy plant in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Following changes to state law in 1980 that prioritized incinerating garbage over directly filling landfills, HERC was developed and began generating electricity in 1989. Located in the North Loop neighborhood near Target Field, the facility replaced a Greyhound Lines bus maintenance facility. The facility which is owned by Hennepin County, collects almost half of all waste generated in the county.
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