Minnesota regulators push haulers toward waste-to-energy

Regulators for the state of Minnesota are pushing collection companies in the north Minneapolis-St. Paul area to divert its waste to local incineration facilities before sending it to landfill, according to an article in the Star Tribune.

According to the report, haulers decided where to take its load based on price, location and company preference. For companies such as Houston-headquartered Waste Management and Phoenix-based Republic Services, its own collection trucks haul waste to its own landfills.

Pressure to take waste to local incinerators comes after data showed high unused capacity rates in 2016, the report says. Great River Energy, Maple Grove, Minnesota, reported around 14 percent of waste that went into metro area landfills instead of its resource recovery project in Elk River, Minnesota.

The Elk River Resource Recovery Project operated at 80 percent capacity in 2016, the report says, and losing millions of dollars per year. Half of the metro area’s waste is recycled or composted while 23 percent of it went to landfills in 2015 and 28 percent was processed for waste-to-energy (WTE).

According to the report, landfill permits issued in 2016 include a restriction on accepting waste that is fit for processing at an incinerator, an upset due to the higher cost of incineration.

Options for reading compliance were studied by industry groups, including state subsidized WTE costs and requiring haulers to take a percentage of its waste to WTE facilities but action from the Legislature would be needed to peruse them.