Waste-to-Energy Master Plan
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The Ames City Council meets on Tuesday at 6:00 p.m. at City Hall. The agenda includes the following (and much more). Note that you can generally click on individual agenda items below to get the full staff report or other explanation.
- 7. Resolution approving Minor Final Plat for Quarry Estates, 6th Addition.
This Plat is the 6th (and final) installment of the Quarry Estates subdivision, north of Ada Hayden. This subdivision, like others in the area, requires a Conservation Management Plan, which has been received and approved. When completed, it will have 26 single-family lots. - 9. Presentation on Waste-to-Energy Master Plan and Motion accepting the Waste-to-Energy Options Study Final Report.
This highly anticipated report (by me, at least), is an important step in our efforts to be sustainable as a city and meet the goals of our Climate Action Plan.
Our current system of waste collection and disposal goes as follows: haulers in Story County bring our waste to the Resource Recovery Plant (RRP) where some of the recyclables are sorted out, some of it gets landfilled, and some ends up going over to the Power Plant two blocks away to be incinerated as RDF (resource derived fuel). This system has some disadvantages. For example, there is little to no storage capacity of the burnable waste, so in effect the Power Plant always has to be running in order to keep up with the incoming garbage, even if it would be cheaper to buy power elsewhere. This is not ideal economically nor ecologically.
So, in April, we hired a consultant to study alternatives or improvements to our current system. (It should be noted that landfilling all of our waste isn't an option on the table. Not only does Boone's landfill (our current landfill when needed) not have the capacity for that, new landfills are very difficult to establish because of environmental issues that they cause.) Staff and the consultant studied seven scenarios: (Fair warning, this gets complicated.)- Scenario 1 - Current System w/ the RRP and Power Plant as is
- Scenario 2A - Maintain the current RRP but build a new RDF unit at the Power Plant and use Unit 8 as backup
- Scenario 2B - Upgrade RRP to produce bigger waste, and build 2 new RDF units at the Power Plant
- Scenario 3A.1 - New RRP on the old coal yard just south of the Power Plant + rest of scenario 2
- Scenario 3A.2 - New RRP with 2 new RDF units to make steam
- Scenario 3B.1 - Build 2 new Mass-Burn unit on old coal yard
- Scenario 3B.2 - Build 2 new Mass-Burn units to make steam
Staff have also added two concepts to consider that weren't included in the consultant's original scope of work: - Move Combustion Turbine #2 from Dayton Rd. to the Power Plant, then make waste-to-energy boiler and steam generator to create a combined-cycle system, whereby a turbine generates electricity both through rotational and thermal energy, rather than rotational energy alone.
- Potential partnership with Lincolnway Energy (a big user of steam) to build a steam-generating waste-to-energy facility by them in Nevada.
These seven scenarios, plus the two extra concepts, will be reviewed at our meeting on Tuesday. Council is being asked to accept the report and allow Staff to continue their research on the feasibility the last two additional options.
Communications to Council: The following items are requests and communications to Council that aren't published on the agenda, so we won't deliberate them substantially. This includes staff reports and communications or requests from constituents and developers. Typically, Council will ask city staff for more information, put the item on a future agenda for deliberation and possible action, or just accept the communication, taking no further action.
- GoodNeighborIowaHealthyParksProgram.pdf .
- IADeptOfCulturalAffairs.pdf .
- Vegetable Gardens .
- Zoning Code Nonconforming Structures .
Thanks for reading,
Bronwyn Beatty-Hansen
Ames City Council, At Large