Gasification Measure Moves to Governor

A proposal to recycle up to 75 percent of  Coachella Valley’s trash by cooking it and then turning it into electricity has cleared a major hurdle.

By classifying "gasification" as a non-burning way to recycle trash, a bill approved by the Legislature last week will clear the way for an Australian company to pursue building the nation’s first gasification facility in California's Coachella Valley. Gov. Gray Davis has 30 days to sign or veto Assembly Bill 2770.

Gasification involves heating trash in sealed tubes until it breaks down and becomes methane, hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The methane and hydrogen is then burned to generate power. All that’s left over is ash that can be reused or sent to a landfill.

"This certainly makes it a whole lot simpler for us to go into California and the Coachella Valley," said Mike Hucks, senior vice president of business development for Brightstar Environmental of Brisbane, Australia, the company that has proposed converting the valley’s trash into electricity.

Hucks said his company will now begin contacting each city in the valley to see if each will agree to send its trash to a Brightstar facility. The company needs at least 150,000 tons of trash per year. The valley currently produces about 465,000 tons of trash per year.

Estimates are that it would take two to three years to get permits and build a gasification facility in the valley. It would cost about $40 million, a bill that Brightstar would pick up in exchange for the right to sell the estimated 35 megawatts of power the plant would produce.

With Edom Hill Landfill closing at the end of 2004, interest in converting valley trash into energy is high because, along with recycling, it would reduce the amount of trash that would have to be hauled to landfills outside of the valley by more than 90 percent.

Hucks said a key reason Brightstar is looking to build in the valley is because it’s one of the few locations where -- because local trash will have to be hauled out of the valley when Edom Hill closes -- it won’t cost more to convert the valley’s trash into energy then it will to throw it away.

Cooking trash will cost about $35 per ton, very near the price local cities will have to pay to send their trash to an out-of-the-valley landfill.

"It looks like the timing could be right," said Roy Wilson, Riverside County’s 4th District supervisor. "If it all comes together, it will be a good project."

The bill will also allow cities to get credit for any trash that Brightstar recycles, something that will help them meet a state requirement to divert at least 50 percent of their trash.

Related legislation will designate the energy produced by the Brightstar facility as renewable, which would make it in higher demand as the state moves closer to a 2017 requirement that 20 percent of the state’s ener- gy come from renewable sources.

"We’re pretty far along in the Coachella Valley," Hucks said, saying that Brightstar is seeking to build several gasification facilities in the United States. "It’s our top site right now." – The Desert Sun (Palm Springs, Calif.)